In this world – whether electronic or real – everyone is targeted by ads. Most are generic, othersare revealing. What can you trust? To start, most things on the Internet are free – freemium, really. Don’t believe me? Take a look at that huge banner ad on Facebook, the one in the right-hand column.
Keep in mind ads make services like Facebook and email available at no cost. In return, you surrender personal details about yourself and agree to Terms of Service. The ads you then see are personalized based on the data you provided about yourself – if the ads don’t reflect your personal tastes, the data you gave likely wasn’t accurate.
Beware that all websites collect data on you, whether it’s geolocation, your preferences or websites you have previously visited, among other things. This is done without consent because websites are content-driven. Such a traffic allows analytics teams to tell content authors/site owners how much traffic their content generates.
How long have things like this been policy? It became mainstream with Google Analytics in
2005, but it existed before in another form known as Internet cookies. Cookies are nothing
more than preference savers. For example, if you don’t want to type your password and click “Remember Me,” no cookie is created for that information. Cookies also help generate the ad banner that occasionally appears in your browser window.
When ad tracking was introduced, Yahoo and Google quickly acquired advertising companies.
Yahoo bought Overture, Google bought Urchin & Doubleclick. Between these two monoliths, they possess the largest personalized profile of any individual user on the Internet. As a side note, Bing (Microsoft) now owns Yahoo’s search results and advertising. Yahoo agreed to a search deal with Microsoft. This is how the Internet has today consolidated into two camps:
Google vs Microsoft. As for ad tracking, Facebook and Google are the ones with nearly
complete profiles on you.
Just look at the personal information I have provided to Facebook. Then look at how I as an advertiser can appeal to a niche crowd.
Google Adsense and Bing ads are alike in the regard of targeted advertising. Needless to say, we should be VERY WARY, as mentioned in previous blogs concerning NSA Facts & Who Controls The Internet, about the personal information we provide when online. Every website service you use tracks your activities. If you’re not paying for it, you are the product being sold!
To drive home this point, think about the number of people who use credit cards. Did you know that credit cards use your purchases to build, among other things, a credit history? The greeting cards at shopping centers that you buy for special occasions. Or magazine subscriptions, which have been popular since the 1950s. These purchases help create ad profiles based on what advertisers see as your preferences. But don’t think this practice is new – it’s been around since Edward Bernays PR campaigns of the early 1900s.
As a user, if you would like to fight back against tracking profiles based on your personal information, utilize tools like Ghostrey or EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere.
Or watch the following great advice from tech shows I watch:
TWiT discuss Facebook’s Sponsored Likes ads (and unlike a bunch of pages)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig4dVuAhJrQ
Targeted Advertising – Good or Bad?: TWiT 451
