Many of the advertisements people see online today are customized.
Using so-called browser cookies, advertisers can track a given Web
surfers' habits and serve them relevant ads.
This election year, a related type of targeted ads—one relying on "political cookies"—is coming into widespread use.
The technology involves matching a person's Web identity with information gathered about that person offline, including his or her party registration, voting history, charitable donations, address, age, and even hobbies.
Companies selling political targeting services say "microtargeting" of campaign advertising will make it less expensive, more up to the minute, and possibly less intrusive. But critics say there are downsides to political ads that combine offline and online data, and not just a possible invasion of privacy. "These are not your mom and pop TV ads. These are ads increasingly designed for you—to tell you what you may want to hear," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
Audience Partners, a firm founded in 2008, says it can now reach 130 million registered U.S. voters online, or about 80 percent of total voters. The company was formed after one of its founders ran for Congress in the Philadelphia area and calculated that he would have to spend $3 million on television ads running in a TV market of six million people in order to reach a district with just 367,000 registered voters.
Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428347/campaigns-to-track-voters-with-political-cookies/
This election year, a related type of targeted ads—one relying on "political cookies"—is coming into widespread use.
The technology involves matching a person's Web identity with information gathered about that person offline, including his or her party registration, voting history, charitable donations, address, age, and even hobbies.
Companies selling political targeting services say "microtargeting" of campaign advertising will make it less expensive, more up to the minute, and possibly less intrusive. But critics say there are downsides to political ads that combine offline and online data, and not just a possible invasion of privacy. "These are not your mom and pop TV ads. These are ads increasingly designed for you—to tell you what you may want to hear," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
Audience Partners, a firm founded in 2008, says it can now reach 130 million registered U.S. voters online, or about 80 percent of total voters. The company was formed after one of its founders ran for Congress in the Philadelphia area and calculated that he would have to spend $3 million on television ads running in a TV market of six million people in order to reach a district with just 367,000 registered voters.
Read more: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428347/campaigns-to-track-voters-with-political-cookies/
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