Don Marti

Mon 19 Aug 2013 06:30:14 AM PDT

Adversariality and web ads

I have an RSS feed aggregator that subscribes to feeds from people in the online ad business, and also from people looking at the online ad business from the outside. Why does it sound like one group is talking about targeted ads as ponies everyone wants, and the other is talking about them as rats to be exterminated?

From within the online ad business, increasingly detailed tracking, profiling, and targeting of users is a great idea. A recent example, from Jeremy Ozen, is The Ad Industry Must Stand Up for the Collection of Mobile Data.

Meanwhile, everyone else who writes about online ads just wants to avoid being tracked, profiled, and targeted. Here's a recent example of that. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing covers a browser plugin intended to make it harder to profile your traffic based on surveillance.

So why the big difference? Why does adtech seek relevance, but regular people avoid it? Let's see if I can put it in 140 characters.