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Well, turning "ip:25.43.251.5, user-agent:firefox" into "male, 18-19" actually requires a fair bit of that tracking stuff. Also, classifieds are what kept news

by jbooth 16y ago

Well, turning "ip:25.43.251.5, user-agent:firefox" into "male, 18-19" actually requires a fair bit of that tracking stuff. Also, classifieds are what kept newspapers supplied with ink and papers. Branding-targeted advertising was a side revenue, and mass conversion-targeted advertising as we know it now didn't really exist yet (although you can call classifieds a small-scale conversion targetted ad, I suppose).

jacquesm 16y ago
Indeed, classifieds are simply ads targeted at a local audience. As for the male 18-19 bit, that is something that a site would deduce from a typical sample or survey, not from invasive tracking. btw, how did you get my IP address? You got the age wrong ;)
- jbooth 16y ago
  Well, RE: samples or surveys, users don't fill them out very often, which is why ad networks and information providers drop a cookie whenever they manage to find that out about someone for later recall. If you're just some blog, no way people are filling that out on your site.. so you get a deal with a tracking ad company that combines your traffic with data to make it more valuable than just run-of-the-network generic traffic.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    The samples and surveys I'm referring to are paid for by the media company, typically conducted by third parties with some credibility in the field. Plenty of people are on a 'panel' of this kind, they periodically fill out surveys about the brands they consume, the tv programmes they watch and sites they visit. And yes, that's geared towards the larger content producers, it would take some doing to get similar metrics for smaller companies and blogs, but I can imagine that you could create a series of 'verticals' that would form the aggregate of a whole series of blogs and blogs could then be categorized as being part of a vertical to be included in the surveys in a statistically relevant manner. So it's not a survey that suddenly pops up on the site (though that's been done, the quality of those is typically not as good).

by jbooth 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago

Indeed, classifieds are simply ads targeted at a local audience. As for the male 18-19 bit, that is something that a site would deduce from a typical sample or survey, not from invasive tracking. btw, how did you get my IP address? You got the age wrong ;)

jbooth 16y ago
Well, RE: samples or surveys, users don't fill them out very often, which is why ad networks and information providers drop a cookie whenever they manage to find that out about someone for later recall. If you're just some blog, no way people are filling that out on your site.. so you get a deal with a tracking ad company that combines your traffic with data to make it more valuable than just run-of-the-network generic traffic.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  The samples and surveys I'm referring to are paid for by the media company, typically conducted by third parties with some credibility in the field. Plenty of people are on a 'panel' of this kind, they periodically fill out surveys about the brands they consume, the tv programmes they watch and sites they visit. And yes, that's geared towards the larger content producers, it would take some doing to get similar metrics for smaller companies and blogs, but I can imagine that you could create a series of 'verticals' that would form the aggregate of a whole series of blogs and blogs could then be categorized as being part of a vertical to be included in the surveys in a statistically relevant manner. So it's not a survey that suddenly pops up on the site (though that's been done, the quality of those is typically not as good).