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Bidding on Your Attention in Real-Time May Streamline Web Ads

by Terrence O'Brien on March 13, 2010 at 12:15 PM

It's an accepted fact of life in the Internet age that companies like Google will collect (supposedly) anonymous information about your browsing habits and serve up targeted ads relevant to your interests. Though, there is a problem with this model (beyond the privacy concerns): What good does showing you 50 ads for laptops in 30 minutes do?

Newer systems are coming into favor that let advertisers buy ads as their target audience is loading a specific page, instead of buying blocks of advertising from a network. eBay has been testing such a system from a company called AppNexus that uses not just browsing history, but leverages eBay's knowledge of location, searches and purchases. The whole process takes just milliseconds as eBay identifies and offers ad space to its clients, and advertisers must then decide whether or not to bid on the space in order to customize it to that particular visitor.

For instance, a retailer could instantaneously change the products listed and the look of an ad based on a visitor's gender and recent purchases. Now, instead of those 50 ads for laptops, you might see ads for laptop bags and docking stations after buying that computer.

Edward Montes, managing director for Havas Digital North America, told the New York Times that real-time bidding cuts waste because, "you can use less media" and "more efficient media." Yet, not everyone is thrilled. The FCC has expressed concern over the use of targeted advertising, and Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy complained that, "The fact that you can be auctioned off in 12 milliseconds or less just illustrates how privacy in this country has rapidly eroded."

Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have all started, or plan to start, testing similar programs. So expect this sort of "instant" ad placement to become standard in the coming months. [From: New York Times]

Tags: ads, advertising, appnexus, ebay, google, microsoft, privacy, targeted advertising, TargetedAdvertising, top, yahoo

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