Talk:Targeted advertising/Archives/2015

E-Targeted Advertising

I did some research for one of my classes on electronic targeted advertising. Perhaps some of the information in my report could prove useful to a contributor to this page:

h2 Marketing

Targeted advertising, the process of placing advertisements to consumers who are more likely to respond to it, has been around almost as long as marketing. However, targeted advertising has become more and more controversial in the internet age as technology has allowed it to become more invasive by closely monitoring potential customers.

h3 How Targeted Advertising Works

__The Tradition E-Marketing Model__

The traditional e-marketing model closely follows the traditional model of targeted advertising. Online advertising agencies, such as Google Doubleclick, research the demographics of websites and target advertising to those websites based on what will appeal to that site’s visitors. For example, an ad agency may find that ESPN.com is popular among young adult males and display ads on the site that would appeal to this demographic, such as advertisements for cars and electronics. This form of advertising is not controversial from a privacy standpoint.

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• ~~Traditional E-Marketing Model~~

__ The Personal Information E-Marketing Model__

The personal information e-marketing model is a recent phenomenon that first developed within the marketing community with the emergence of the internet. Under the model, personal information about the user is stored in a small file on the user’s computer called a cookie by website advertising whenever the user visits a website. The information stored in the cookie is typically non-personally identifiable information, such as websites viewed and advertisements clicked on, which cannot be used to identify the user or pose a security threat. However, controversy has occurred when companies such as Abacus-Direct have tried to link cookie information with databases of personally identifiable information, such as users’ names and birthdays, which could be used to link the cookie with a specific person. Advertisers then use the information stored in the cookie to make predictions about what the user might be interested in, which is then combined with information from the traditional e-marketing model to present the user with targeted advertising. This method of targeted advertising has proven controversial due to the security and privacy concerns associated with storing the user’s browsing information on her computer and websites being able to retrieve this information. Proponents argue that personally targeted advertising benefits consumers by showing them fewer ads that are more closely tailored to their preferences.

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• ~~Personal Information E-Marketing Model~~

h3 Case Study: Profiling Through Facebook Interactions

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 {image:worksite:/Big Brother is Watching/facebook.png|facebook.png}

Companies such as 33Across and Media6Degrees are analyzing connections between Facebook friends. Some of the things they monitor are how often a user visits a friend's page, sends a video or exchanges an instant message. This lets them identify people who are friends with a company’s existing customers, and then advertise to them. It works like this: When someone visits a certain page — something that indicates interest, like a shopping-cart page or a product information page — the companies place a cookie on his or her computer. When he or she visits another site that has been programmed to look for that cookie, the new site can identify the person as someone who has already shown potential interest in a particular type of product. Potential customers who know current clients are easier targets, and profiling through Facebook helps companies target these people. Furthermore, most people with Facebook connections are socioeconomically similar, which makes this form of research even more accurate.

There are some qualms with this new tactic: Publishers aren't happy with it because advertisers can assemble promising audiences while bypassing expensive sites such as CNN.com and ESPN.com. Also, there are obviously privacy issues which are being examined in Congress currently.

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• ~~Social Networking E-Marketing Model~~

h3 Rejected Privacy Protections

The following were proposals on privacy protection that were rejected by the Interactive Advising Bureau:

__Every Ad Should Explain Itself__

Companies like Google and Yahoo! have suggested that each ad on a page have a link that will take users to an explanation of the ad. The group's proposal offers this as an option, but the also allow a link at the bottom of a page, so long as the link is “clear, meaningful and prominent.”

__Users Should be Able to See Data Collected About Them__

Google now will tell users what it thinks they are interested in based on what sites they have visited in the past. Internet advertising groups rejected this kind of disclosure as a standard, arguing that it is too complex technically.

__Browsers Should Help Enforce User Choices About Tracking__

Advertising companies claim to want to give users the option to opt out of having their online activities tracked. However, the technology involved in this process is severely flawed. Their method is to place a cookie on the user's browser that signals it not to track searches. However, when a cookie gets erased, which happens frequently, the tracking resumes.

__Some Information is Too Sensitive to Track__

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has suggested that some personal information, such as info pertaining to one's health or finances, should be off limits to advertising systems. However, medical and financial companies are the biggest advertisers, so implementing such a restriction has been difficult. Instead, the Advertising groups proposed a solution that bans only the collection of “pharmaceutical prescriptions or medical records.”

h3 References

1. Clifford, Stephanie. "The Online Ad That Knows Where Your Friends Shop." ~~The New York Times.~~ June 25, 2009.

2. Hansell, Saul. "Four Privacy Protections the Online Ad Industry Left Out." ~~The New York Times.~~ July 6, 2009.

3. Miller, Jason. "Core Privacy: A Problem for Predictive Data Mining." Lessons from the Identity Trail. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

4. "Personally identifiable information." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 20 Sep 2009, 23:31 UTC. 8 Nov 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Personally_identifiable_information&oldid=315194164>.

5. Judy Strauss, Adel El-Ansary and Raymond Frost. E-Marketing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006.

[Next: Conclusion|Conclusion]

--Schubatis1 (talk) 23:18, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Aidanpatrick (talk) 21:47, 29 April 2015 (UTC) I am student at a university and I plan on editing this page in the near future. User:Aidanpatrick/Targeted advertising