Adware?

[King Andreas]

After ordering a pinball machine, I noticed this ad displayed on GTAForums:

 

 

That's splendid, considering I advocate seeing ads that match my interests.

 

Moments later, after ordering pizza, I observed this ad displayed on GTAForums:

 

 

Of the thousands of ads, the odds of twice in a row is too coincidental, huh? That means GTAForums or adware/spyware must be behind this, right? Which one is it? A Microsoft scan found nothing; a Malwarebytes scan detected a "pup.optional" thing. Whatever that is, if it was "optional", it wouldn't have been on my computer. I removed it; the ads persisted. My computer history never dictated the ads displayed here before, so is it the work of GTAForums (if so, great upgrade) or some undetectable, undesired infection?

Edited June 29, 2014 by King Andreas

[WBaker]

It's not gtaforums watching you exactly, it's google. I get ads for suboxone, so it's not perfect.

[Girish]

It's Google AdSense that decides what ads to show, not us.

[Sentrion]

It's related to Google Adsense. It just picks up your recent purchases from Amazon or a similar online shopping sites and displays your recent purchases as Ads. You can try using Amazon or any similar website and see your purchased items as ads on GTAF.

[Spider-Vice]

That is exactly what they mean with "tailoring ads to your experience", that's how Google Adsense works. It is with any website, a personal example was me browsing weather related things and I started getting ads for weather stations.

Basically it's not GTAForums, nor adware or spyware, it's how it works, via cookies and other data.