We’ve all searched a product online only to be targeted by similar ads for weeks to come, and while seeing the hair dryer you recently googled is annoying and creepy, it’s easy to gloss over. But if you’ve had a miscarriage, you know just how heartbreaking it can be when ads for cribs and onesies follow you around the internet for months after your loss. This is something that an important new initiative out of Toronto?s Sunnybrook Hospital is hoping to change.
Many expectant parents start researching and planning for their new arrival as soon as they find out they?re pregnant, with ad networks collecting data from each search in order to send ads of similar products for up to 540 days (the maximum amount of time an individual can be ?remarketed?). This means baby ads can follow you for more than a year after a loss, which is not only extremely triggering but can also prolong the grieving process. To help protect parents, Sunnybrook’s Pregnancy and Infant Loss (PAIL) network introduced an ingenious new tool in mid-June as part of the #UnsilenceTheConversation campaign: the Baby Ad Opt-Out. The opt-out tool is a browser plugin that can be installed on your computer and phone from the #UnsilenceTheConversation website. Once downloaded, you can open the browser extension to get instructions on how to update your advertising settings and unsubscribe from any parenting and baby-related ads. You can select which platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tw...