Doubleclick Exits The Ad-Tracking Business

Masem writes: "Cnet is reporting that Doubleclick closed down its ad tracking program as of Dec 31 2001, and is shifting from a media company to research and development for online ventures. Doubleclick claims they had upwards of 100million unique tracking profiles at the height of their run, but with the dot-com bust and lower ad revenue rates, ad tracking ran into the red. Even after the worrisome aquition of Abacus Online (which was rumored to allow Doubleclick to connect online and offline consumer profiles), the company could not turn a buck on ad revenues. Time to remove that 'doubleclick.com 127.0.0.1' from /etc/hosts now?""

Is this a troll or something

[theMAGE]

At the very top of the page it was a link: http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N2613.osdn/B49638.2 ;sz=468x60;ord=101052438101052438

This is a bad joke. I will keep ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1 untill I find it on f***edcompany.com

one step closer

[llamalicious]

Hopefully this will start a trend in the downfall of web banners, popups/unders and shoshkeles. (ducks)
Don't get me wrong, I work at an Ad Agency, as their senior interactive developer, but the proliferation of advertising on the internet without supporting revenue streams has always seemed a little silly to me.
at least more common advertising mediums actually show positive ROI when executed well.

I don't care how innovative your flash banner, pop-under, or mouse trailer is, it's not going to make me more inclined to purchase your products.
True, it may build brand recognition, and increase word-of-mouth talk about a particular company or item, but where's the proof in the pudding?

Are they really just shutting down?

[Brett Glass]

I'm sure that DoubleClick realizes that its tracking database, and the equipment and softawre that compile it, are valuable to certain unscrupulous marketers. It therefore seems highly unlikely that they would "just" shut down. It's much more likely that they'll sell it to another unscrupulous company. I won't stop blocking them yet.... Rather, I'll prepare to block whichever company (e.g. Naviant or Donnelly) buys their tracking system.

Great news if....

[Anonymous Coward]

Great news if Doubleclick flushes out its database of personal information.

Re:Good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, hello?

You can't wait for doubleclick to go away but you want more targeted advertising? The announcement was that doubleclick is stopping all targeted advertising and just dealing out untracked spots.

Re:Well, it's something at least

[mikethegeek]

" Nice to see there's a business case out there now against profiling Internet users for ads. Too bad it will most likely be looked at as a fluke failure ("oh they charged too much, we'll charge less") "

Advertising doesn't offend me. What does offend me, however, are ads that manipulate, or take over my browser (pop ups, pop under/overs, interstitials, scrollers). Most offensive of all are tracker ads that track my movements OFF the site that has the ad.

And it offended enough people for whole browsers (Mozilla, Konqueror) to be written with features specifically designed to halt this, if the user so chose.

As I said, I don't mind ads as a way to pay for content on a site, any more than I mind ads on TV and radio. But TV and radio advertisers learn NOTHING personally about me just for my action of watching/listening to any given show. They get my info only if I choose to give it, by responding to their ad.

Really, the whole internet advertising business killed itself by doing this. By collecting such information and making it available to their advertisers, it created the illusion that internet ads are LESS effective than any other form.

What I think is that this let the cat of truth out of the marketer's bag, that really ALL forms of advertising are routinuely ignored by a public that is increasingly bombarded and increasingly resistant. It's just that on TV and radio, the advertiser has no DIRECT, perfect statistics to back this up as they do with internet ads.

I believe once internet ads return to the same philospohy of TV, print, and radio ads, to make impressions and build recognition, rather than as a "buy me NOW!" button, they will be much more effective.

Re:Sorry, no

[Hnice]

You're right, of course -- and given that this is the case, doesn't this seem like a strange move, to get completely out of tracking? Their dart tags had termendous potential for tracking people, given the ubiquity of DC-served ads. What does it really cost them to keep tracking this stuff, besides a few more boxes in back -- which they already own, btw?

Sure, there are other overhead issues here when it comes to analysis or putting a front-end on the collected data, but the one and only time i used dc data in my modeling, i made them give it to me raw, which they did with a little arm-twisting.

Just seems a little baby-bathwateresque, with the hardware and the software already in place to chuck the whole thing. Are they really doing this? And does anyone know why?

PS -- i know they're evil. that makes this seem *more* strange, not less.

Re:Sorry, no

[zama]

Which in a way sucks. It's companies like X10 that do the annoying bulk purchases of the same firckin ad over and over. The stuff that was done with Intelligent Targeting was awesome - for example, GM had these ads for a new line of commercial vans that would target particular occupations and industries. Each ad was unique and tailored to each field. If I was a plumber surfing the web and I had my choice between seeing a "Punch the Monkey" ad and a banner tailored to my career about a product I might actually be interested in, I know which I'd rather see.

In a lot of cases I'd rather get a targeted ad than a non-targeted.

On the other side (donning asbestos suit)

[tperkow]

As a marketer and a long-time heavy internet user, I think we've gone a bit far here.

There are a lot of benefits to the profiling and targeting, and the real potential for encroaching on my privacy is relatively limited. The company I work for would not exist without targeted marketing based on profiles built up on individuals.

We don't care what the person's sex/race/religion/politics are unless that data means the person is more likely to buy (and thus is intersted in our product). Even if we had that kind of information, we're a business.

Think about it from the other side: do I need to see ads for products I'll never buy? I'd much rather people give me offers and deals that match things I already buy. It's more useful to me.

You won't get there from here without targeting. This targeting gives us free (network) TV/sports/etc. It supports magazines we subscribe to at $1 an issue instead of $5. It supports websites we read, including this one. Slashdot is pretty obvious targeting, but CNN.com?

I do believe there's an important balance, but still -- we shouldn't be rejoicing about this.

Flame away.

Its all relative

[Restil]

Doubleclick is failing because ads on the internet are failing in general. Why? Because there is more advertising than there is cash flow to justify it. Too many companies and individuals are sporting banner ads to make a few bucks, while depleting the ad resources that would better go to the websites that could really use it. Of course, its all a matter of supply and demand.

To be effective, you need a LOT of ecommerce sites. And you need a LOT of people conducting business through those sites. However, while 50% of Americans might be using the internet, you can bet that 50% of all retail purchases are not conducted through it. You have an excessive amount of consumers not actually spending money to support online businesses, but still "consuming" the free products that are being funded somewhat indirectly by those same businesses. Imagine if all the customers of a grocery store came in to take only the free samples and left.

Also, the average online consumer is less affected by online ads than their equivilant counterpart in meatspace is. The brainwashed masses who watch primetime TV every night are more influenced by the 33% of their TV watching experience, which is comprised of commercials. It also helps that generally speaking, most commercials are actually advertising products that people will use, instead of porn sites and pyramid schemes. Yes, I realize not all banner ads are about these things, but most of the spam we get is, and this spam reflects in the minds of the consumers in much the same way. Once they realize they're being suckered, all online advertising is seen in the same light.

What ends up happening, is we have a much smaller percentage of online consumers who are easily influenced by ads of any sort, yet those consumers are still consuming the free material supported by those very ads.

Targeting ads at consumers who are not influenced by ads won't have any greater effect. They're still just as likely to ignore them. The added overhead involved in accumulating this information is mostly wasted. Also, remember that the purpose of most advertising is not to inform a user of a product's existance, but to psycologically imprint that product's name so the next time the consumer is shopping and see's the product, they're more likely to grab it. This is why we still see coke commercials, even though everyone knows what coke is. It becomes an issue of name recognition.

Online, name recognition is less of a concern. If you're buying products online, you probably already know what you're looking for. The best an advertiser can hope for is to place a similar product next to one the consumer is looking for, hoping to catch his/her eye. Ultimately, every website will either have to fund their own content, which is fine until it becomes too popular to justify, charge subscriptions, which goes against the grain of what everyone is used to for content based websites, or sell products to generate revenue.

If more sites do this, then ads will have greater value. They will also advertise actual products instead of other content sites, which would create more cashflow. However, this could take some time.

-Restil

"Unique" profiles?

[Ragin'Cajun]

I wonder what they meant by unique profiles. I clean out my cookies every week or so. Does this mean I get to be unique hundreds of times? I'm sure the actual number of people they're tracking is much lower, especially when you prune people who appear not to have looked at a webpage in the last 6 months. It would require an enormous amount of work to get any value at all out of a database like that.

Crunch those numbers, boys!

Re:On the other side (donning asbestos suit)

[Secret Coward]

We don't care what the person's sex/race/religion/politics are unless that data means the person is more likely to buy (and thus is intersted in our product). Even if we had that kind of information, we're a business.

You might not need it, but somebody will.

• Employers would love to buy a psychological profile of you, in the same way a bank buys your credit report.
  
• Lawyers would love to know which jurors will help them, and which jurors will hurt them.
  
• Your browsing habits would provide tantilizing data for prospective mates.
  
• Corrupt government officials would like to know if prospective employees will break the law to support their cause.
  
• Scam artists would like to know if you're a schmuck who will buy or believe anything.
  
• Criminal syndicates would like to know if you've been investigating options that they disagree with.
  
• The public would drool over the browsing habits of alleged sex offenders.
  
• Politicians would never hesitate to dig up dirt on their competitors.
  
• Stalkers would obsess over the personal lives of their victims.
  
• The media would like to know which political candidates have been reading up on copyright issues.
  

You may only be interested in whether or not someone will buy your product, but the market for personal data far exceeds your little advertising agenda.