John's Blog

Greetings fellow bloggers. This week we’ll shift gears and take a look at companies that are tracing Internet users’ histories to collect valuable marketing information. Select companies have started collecting this information to display advertisements tailored to specific user interests and needs. I found an interesting article from the New York Times that was published very recently which unveils this cutting edge technique.

Internet advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and there is no question that companies will attempt to reach a more accurate target audience by any legal means necessary. The article addresses in particular the popular search engines offered by Yahoo, Google, and MSN. This is a legal practice as long as the terms are stated in the privacy policies, which very few users actually take the time to read.

My initial gut reaction to this news was, “Hey! Who do these people think they are?! That seems like an invasion of privacy. These marketing tech geeks should just mind their own business!” But after cooling down and taking a step back, I thought to myself, “Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all...” Advertising has become such a huge part of the Internet and will continue to grow in the forthcoming years. How often is it that you see an Internet ad that actually interests you? If your experiences have been anything like mine, the answer would be never. So if I inevitably need to deal with web ads, why not have ads that are actually interesting? Perhaps this point would be better illustrated by an example. I practically use Yahoo search and mail on a daily basis. We’ll say that on a given day I searched for Fender electric guitars, Spoon (one of my favorite bands), and hang gliders. If Yahoo had not collected any information about me I would be greeted with those awful generic ads that nobody wants to see – “Refinance your house!” “Instant credit score!” “Guaranteed credit card approval!”. Not interested. But, if Yahoo eventually had the tools to look at my search information to give me ads such as new guitar pedals, Ticketmaster shows with related artists (maybe some of my favorite bands are coming to town), or a deal on a hang gliding vacation in California – heck you’ve got my interest.

All in all, I think this new marketing technique can be good or bad depending upon how you look at it. I would hope that with its growing popularity the proper authorities take the time to prevent any misuse of collected information.

- JJC Jr