The Case For Targeted Ads 290
Nofsck Ingcloo writes "CNet has published a guest column by Eric Wheeler warning the world of the evil consequences of Do Not Track. In it he makes strong (I would claim exaggerated) arguments in favor of targeted advertising. He claims the threat of political action on Do Not Track should, 'strike fear into the hearts of every company that does business online....' He speaks of compromising a $300 billion industry, which I read as being the industry composed of online advertisers and all their clients. He clearly thinks the trade off between freedom from snooping and free access to web content always favors free access. He concludes his arguments by saying, 'Taken as a whole, the potentially dire impact of Do Not Track is clear: the end of the free internet and a crippling blow to the technology industry.' He then goes on to advocate contacting legislators and the FTC in opposition to Do Not Track."
Re:Irony not lost (Score:5, Informative)
The writer of this bullshit piece is the CEO of an advertising/tracking firm "33Across"
"Over 600,000 publishers and more than 375 Fortune 1000 marketers use 33Across’s Brand Graph technology, tools, and real-time predictive systems to connect their content and products into the social graph. Clients rely on their Brand Graph to leverage how individuals and the networks around them react to what is read, purchased, shared, and recommended in real-time. Reaching over a billion users, 33Across processes tens of thousands anonymous social engagement, influence, and interest actions that surround marketer and publisher brands each second."
Why do we even listen to these people?
Re:Isn't it Voluntary? (Score:4, Informative)
The way to combat this is for every website that detects the DNT header to simply respond with a page saying how to turn it off or download a different browser. How quickly we all forget what it was like to be constantly bombarded with ads for products you cannnot use or cannot be purchased in your locale.
"campaign contributions"... (Score:5, Informative)
"campaign" I don't know, but money I do.
I'm in my 50s. I have sons that are young engineers, and as such I regularly meet a range of their young colleagues: somehow I have a view of the 'young engineer' population here in Europe.
If one thing is clear within this 20~30 people group, it's that the richest of them BY FAR are the ones that are employed by an ad-targeting firm.
And the firm itself is HUGELY profitable, recruiting as much as they can, etc.
So, definitely there is money running, pouring, flooding even, presently in the ad-targeting business.