PUBLIC MARKS from sbrothier with tags privacy & advertising

The entire ad placement network is one of the most complex computational systems on the planet. Behind The Banner is an attempt to understand the underlying interactions that define this ecosystem, and how they impact our daily use of the web.

We spend hours a day online, and we see ads on every webpage we visit. But we don’t have any way of tracking the ads we’re being served — we don’t even know how many ads the average person sees in a given day.

The White House may be asking food marketers to be responsible when it comes to marketing to kids, but the snack food industry still needs to keep increasing its profits. Mondelez International, the company that owns brands like Chips Ahoy and Ritz, is going about it in an intrusive and rather creepy way. This is something you need to be aware of.

Facebook announced changes to its privacy and advertising policies on its company blog last Thursday, extending Facebook's ability to track users outside of Facebook -- undoing previous assurances it "does not track users across the web."

Welcome to the consumer opt out page for the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising. Our participating companies are committed to transparency and choice. Some of the ads you receive on Web pages are customized based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits over time and across different Web sites. This type of ad customization — sometimes called "online behavioral" or "interest-based" advertising — is enabled through your computer browser and browser cookies. Such online advertising helps support the free content, products and services you get online.

Mozilla's cookie-blocking plan has been controversial from the start. As much as privacy hawks praised it, it was blasted by the interactive advertising industry for its potential to wipe out smaller Web publishers that rely on third-party ads to stay in business. And unlike with Microsoft's default Do Not Track browser, which simply sends a signal, Mozilla's plan can't be ignored. 

The advertising industry suffered a setback late last night when the Tracking Protection Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium rejected the Digital Advertising Alliance's draft proposal for a universal Do Not Track standard.

Marketers and advertisers, too, would relish the opportunity to target our future selves with ads like, “Need a haircut? In four days, you’ll be 100 yards from a salon that will have a $15 special.” On the social side, there could even be something like a Foursquare of the Future--who wouldn’t want to know where their friends (and enemies) will be for the rest of their lives…or at least for the next 285 days?

Twitter fait ami-ami avec l'agence de publicité britannique WPP. Les deux sociétés ont conclu un partenariat stratégique à travers lequel le puissant groupe publicitaire et de communication britannique (70 milliards de dollars de revenus !) utilisera les données du réseau social afin de mieux cibler les campagnes de ses clients.