Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

They're watching

Based on the weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo Inc. has a good idea where you live. Based on searches you've done, the Web portal might also know where you want to go. Don't be surprised then to suddenly see an advertisement on flight deals between those two places. It's what United Airlines did with an ad on Yahoo this year as people browsed for something completely unrelated to travel. Elsewhere, online hangout Facebook is mining friends' buying habits, and major Internet portals have bought companies to expand their reach and capabilities for "behavioral targeting" - all so advertisers can try to hit you with what they think you're most likely to buy, even as doing so means amassing more data on you.

Behavioral targeting, commonly accomplished by depositing tiny data files on personal computers to keep track of surfing patterns, has raised privacy questions and, at least in the case of Facebook, user complaints.

From the perspective of Web sites and advertisers, though, behavioral targeting can bring to the rest of the Internet some of the relevancy Google Inc. and others successfully mined for billions of dollars with text-based search ads.

Although behavioral targeting isn't right for all advertisers, it has become increasingly important as companies try to break through the clutter. The research company eMarketer projects that spending on behavioral targeting will nearly double to $1-billion next year and hit $3.8-billion by 2011.

Consumers are having trouble understanding all that Web sites are up to, said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The Federal Trade Commission recently held hearings at which consumer-protection and privacy groups including Schwartz' called for the creation of a "do not track" list.

The Web portals, particularly Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, are stepping up their educational efforts in response to privacy concerns, trying to sell Internet users on the idea that if they are to see advertising to support free services, a targeted, relevant ad is far less annoying.

They also stress that they aren't capturing sensitive information like names and e-mail addresses. Indeed, companies aren't going as far as they could. Advertisers and Web sites have to figure out how far they can push without alienating their users.

Most Web sites and marketers have been shunning the ultimate targeting - ads that greet you by name. And many have declined to sell ads based on diseases you've read about.

"We could track them and target ads for sensitive health conditions and get lots of money from pharmaceutical companies for that, but there are certain things we've chosen not to do," Dave Morgan, a senior AOL advertising executive who founded Tacoda, a behavioral-targeting company AOL bought in September.

How it works

TARGETED ADS: Targeting has been around as long as there has been advertising. Automakers promote themselves in car magazines. Political campaigns send mail to likely voters. As advertising moved to the Internet, ads for diapers clung to parenting sites.

KEYWORDS: With search came contextual targeting - the ability to target messages even more precisely basedon search terms or keywords appearing in articles. Behavioral targeting brings capabilities to sites without good or reliable keywords - for example, a social-networking profile that touches on dozens of hobbies and interests at once.

HOW YOU'LL NOTICE: Read enough golf articles online and a data file will be put on your computer labeling you a golf fan. When you're on a Web site on cooking, don't be surprised if ads for golf clubs follow you there.

[Last modified December 5, 2007, 01:05:19]