

How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web - chriscampbell
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/im-being-followed-how-google-151-and-104-other-companies-151-are-tracking-me-on-the-web/253758/

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dm8
My startup is in digital advertising (includes desktop, phones and tablets)
space. And I know digital advertising is hated by users. There are three main
reasons, online ads are obnoxious, obtrusive and invade end-user privacy. Lets
step back and understand how come advertising was considered as glamorous and
it turned into evil with digital medium.

Advertising for years operated on the "purchase funnel" concept [1][2]. Top
end of the funnel is occupied by big brand advertisers whose goal is to create
awareness for the brands/products. If you create enough awareness, end-
consumers will eventually buy your products. Generally, brands/companies with
millions of dollars in advertising operate at the top end of the funnel due to
financial resources they have at their disposal. At the bottom of the funnel
there are low end marketers whose sole goal is to find right customers and
make immediate sale.

Other mediums like TV, Out of the home, Print (big magazines not newspapers)
have top of the funnel advertisers pouring millions of dollars. Due to nature
of the medium, you don't know who is watching/viewing your ad (targeting is
very limited). So they engage in creating awareness and eventually prospective
customers.

In digital medium, it's easy to track who is going to be end-user so low-end
of the marketers came into play where you mostly get banner ads like deals,
discount offers to make sale immediately.

Unfortunately, digital advertising ecosystem so far has built around low-end
marketers as customers. Due to this advertising on digital sucks. Banners are
terrible way to advertising for big brands who are not particularly interested
in immediate sale. Result- we haven't seen big brands doing huge campaigns in
digital arena. The share of digital advertising in overall advertising pie is
very small.

To cater, low-end marketers we have crazy level of targeting and people feel
violated when it comes to privacy.

Innovation (to address aforementioned problems) is happening in digital
advertising, albeit at much slower pace. We are seeing new ways of
advertising. Video is attracting bigger brands who are interested in creating
awareness. There are some other interesting solutions popping up (we are
building one, sorry for shameless plug) where by catering to different set of
customers with different objectives we don't have to build user behaviors by
doing crazy data mining. I'm optimistic, as big brands and top end of the
funnel advertisers come into the play, we won't need crazy targeting and
invasion of our privacy. Don't forget digital advertising in current state is
utterly broken and everyone inside industry knows, we will definitely see much
better solutions in next couple of years.

References: [1] Purchase Funnel -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel> [2] Understanding the funnel:
[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/01/understandin...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/01/understanding_t.html)

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selectout
It's a lot more than 105 companies.

But I always hated the word tracking for them. They fall into many different
categories. Some companies collect behavioral data, others personally
identifiable information, others bring offline info online, some are seen
across various sites but only because they are integrated in other services.
So they aren't necessarily tracking you but partnering with one that is.

Also a lot of these are the backbone of ad:tech which powers the free services
people use daily.

Now some of them are definitely not necessary and worthy of blocking, so
really it comes down to what privacy means to you. Personally I'm fine with
most, but many people are not.

Just remember the old overused phrase does stand true. If you're not paying
for it, you are the product.

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samspenc
Might I note that, as you read that article, The Atlantic itself is using
similar advertising and likely has the majority of those 105 companies on its
site? :D

Not blaming them, they need those ad dollars to keep their site running too!

