The online world is an Ad powered marvel. Today, the powers in the internet world (and we're talking Google, Yahoo and AOL here) collectively show more ads to viewers on the internet than all the rest combined. MSN's contribution is more or less lost in the noise, but does contribute some. At the time of writing AOL's ad serving is effectively being subsumed by Google through their recent deal.
Ad serving is a complicated business. It's all about targetting and targetting requires you know who is attached to the eyeballs looking at the monitor. More importantly, it is about knowing those eyeballs enjoy some online casino action, prefer cornflakes for breakfast and have athletes foot. And if you know that then you can sell that knowledge to the online Casinos, Kelloggs and the pharmaceutical companies, who are quite prepared to pay through the nose to get an ad for their product in front of the 10,000 sets of eyeballs interested in it rather than the millions of indifferent eyeballs reading GQ.
Well, that's fine and dandy you say. What does it have to do with me, you and the rest of the planet? It depends on whether you want companies like Google/Yahoo etc knowing you have Athletes foot for example. OK, that's no biggie. But there's no practical difference about them knowing you have Athletes foot and and knowing your porn surfing habits. Both pieces of information are potentially available if your browsing and internet search patterns are known. And known they are!
Take Google as a case in point. They are effectively
the search engine on the internet (yes, Microsoft and Yahoo are also big players in the internet search industry but they are playing catchup, and badly). Google probably has more raw data on individuals via their search patterns, browsing habits, purchasing patterns and even email archives than any other single organisation on the planet. Raw data is not information, however, it must be processed and analysed before becoming useful. Performing this kind of data mining is feasible given sufficient computing power and some R&D. Doing this quickly in real-time is hard. This is where Google excels - they have the biggest computing grid on the planet. Their staff is full of people with those exact skills. And they are using them...
Google's AdSense is a marvel of technology. I've decided to have a play with it to see what it can do. One result is the panel of links to targetted adds displayed on this page (go on, click on one, you know you want to!). As this blog entry mentions AdSense a few times, you're likely to see ads from companies that promote products and services that help you improve the monetization of your site through AdSense.
But AdSense, or more particularly the wider issue of targetted advertising, has a side to it I'm not sure has been aired before. Sure, people have commented on the issues of Google knowing quite a lot about you through their (very useful) products such as the Google Browser Bar, Google Mail, Google Base, Google AdSense etc. Privacy advocates worry about what this enables Google to know about you as a person and your affairs from analysis of this information, should they decide to do so. This is all old hat.
Google's motto is "Don't Be Evil". For a corporation that is an admirable, though subjective, one. It is however, one that is likely to be more durable than most, partially through the structure of the Google IPO that gives the Google founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) an effective lock on control of the company. This will continue until such time that the divestment programs of the founders obsolete that structure. So, taking Google as it's word, we can all feel safe that Google's treasure trove of information about us is safe from prying eyes. Or can we? This
article in the Mercury News suggests we may not be safe after all.
Googles main income stream is derived from giving advertisers value for their advertising dollar. They do this be ensuring an ad displayed to viewer is as relevant to that viewer as Google can make it. One way to make it relevant is to analyse information on the current page being read and display an ad related to that topic. Another is to use your IP address to determine (roughly) where you are in the world. If a web page you're reading talks about piles, then you're likely to see an add from the makers of Preparation H that directs you to a local supplier. Google adds an entry to their database and another if you click on the ad.
Where's the harm in that? You got to see an add related to something you were interested in and were propably quite pleased (assuming you had piles). If you're not bothered with only Google knowing this you may be content. But technology marches on...
Today, you can use your GPS enabled cell phone to use Google to tell you where the nearest pizza parlor or video rental store to you is. That's pretty simple stuff, really. Suppose we take this to the next level, and Google also knows who the owner of the phone is. Now Google knows who is standing in front of the video rental store, and if the store is a Google AdSense customer then they could use Google to provide ads that they display on screens outside the store, or Google could provide movie preference information gleaned from Google's database to the store which could then display a trailer for the latest Bruce Willis movie because Google told them that's what you like. When cell phones have RFIDs in them (wont be long) then the rental store could have small displays spread around inside the store, with the closest one to you displaying movie information or ads targetted at you.
The unremarked side effect of this is that the targetted ads are all public displays driven from your own personal information. An astute watcher may be able to discern quite a lot about you simply by following you around and observing the ads being displayed. The rental store is but one example. When every shop on the street does this then displays in the shop fronts may turn into ghostly mirrors reflecting what Google thinks about you, what you like, dislike and enjoy doing for all to see.
This is still in the future, but it's coming. The lure of the advertising dollar will eventually drive the targetted ad industry in these directions. If Google doesn't do it, someone else will. Time will tell if there are workable restraints (legislative or otherwise).
Is tomorrows world one where our private information leaks out into the wider world through the targetted ads displayed to us? I hope not.
