In a recent Washington Post article, the ISP Embarq was crucified for what many are considering “the profiteering of customer’s private information” by serving retargeting ads. Now, many people will remain concerned about the Big Brother effect the internet seems to have these days, but those who are really worried about the conspiracy of the government watching us through computers probably won’t own one and will therefore, not be retargeted. To those who sill love their PC or Mac but think it’s evil for advertisers to now what you might be interested in seeing based on your behavior, some things need to be straightened out.
It clearly states in this article that personal information is not tracked by the advertisers. The Google toolbar tracks your browsing history, even your computer itself tracks it. How do you think it predicts the URL you are typing into your address bar? Tracking browsing history will not send credit card information or any other personal information to advertisers or your ISP.
I think it’s interesting that the Washington Post wrote this piece with such a biased viewpoint against retargeting and behaviorally targeted online advertising when they are part of a network that displays retargeted ads themselves. The Washington Post is getting part of the profits for showing retargeted ads on the Washington Post site, so don’t think they are above the action they so clearly despise.
When you start seeing ads for sites you’ve visited once, and you’ve never seen these ads before, you’re getting retargeted. You don’t like it? Clear your cookies. That’s all it is. It’s not some big conspiracy that’s tracking your every move. Just a small piece of code that your computer picks up. And your computer gets cookies from nearly every site on the internet, so it’s not just advertisers are that are doing this. No entity can take on this high and mighty attitude, that they aren’t looking at users online behavior in this day and age. That’s how all internet use statistics get created: tracking your online behavior.
