Behavioural Targeting and ValueClick
Posted: September 18th, 2008
The ever-growing number of people flocking toward the online world, as well as the increasing intensity of Internet usage, have long been in the sights of ambitious advertisers and marketers. Sending the right targeted message to a target audience is important for staying on budget, and emerging technologies are paving the way for more precise targeting, in the form of behavioural targeting.
One display ad network that is staking its claim on such technologies is ValueClick. Two behavioural targeting patents that exist in ValueClick’s arsenal are:
1. “Method and apparatus for determining behavioral profile of a computer user” (United States Patent 5848396), which deals with generating psychographic profiles of Internet users “by recording computer activity and viewing habits of the end user.”
2. “Computer program apparatus for determining behavioral profile of a computer user” (United States Patent 5991735 ), which “provides targeting of appropriate audience based on psychographic or behavioral profiles of end users.”
These two patents, filed in 1998 and 1999 respectively, not only highlights the growing trend of behavioural targeting, but also the importance of such technology. In fact, ValueClick has sued numerous advertising networks regarding these patents, including Tacoda, BlueLithium, and Revenue Science.
How big of a role will behavioural targeting play in the future of online advertising? Can it continue to grow despite privacy concerns with respect to the logging of user data?
That’s one of the things I like about using Firefox, I can delete my browsing history and cookie sessions while I’m browsing and when I shut down my browser. I also periodically run a anti-malware scan. Though I’m not sure if all that protects my privacy enough, it does give me a certain amount of feeling more secure as far as my privacy.
Important question indeed. I’m worrying about ‘online privacy’ in terms of being abused to share them without my knowledge. Simply means I can share whatever I want to under my agreement not to be abused somehow to do so!