Thursday, November 06, 2008
Google Wary of Behavioral Targeting In Online Ads
In an article by Eric Auchard during the summer of 2007, it appears that Google Inc. is looking for ways to enhance their online advertising by finding the ideal target audience for those specific ads based on their google searches. This is quite significant because Google earns over $15 billion+ in revenue from advertisements.
Google is trying to find patterns in searches for specific users by tracking various words being typed during a given search session. This has inevitably brought up the issue of violation of privacy. As a response, Google Vice President of Product Management for Advertising Susan Wojcicki states,
"That is not something that we have participated in, for a variety of
reasons... We believe that task-based information at the time (of a user's
search) is the most relevant information to what they are looking at. We always
want to be very careful about what information would or would not be used."
Aside from the issue of a potential invasion of privacy, Google is also a bit wary of varying searches by users at any given time. In an effort to attempt to pick up on user tendencies, Google has been intentionally placing ads on pages of users based on their current and previous search as sort of a test run.
Google is well aware of the issues at hand for this process, as Wojcicki acknowledges that Google has been hesitant about drawing too many conclusions about users from search terms at anytime.
Google is trying to find patterns in searches for specific users by tracking various words being typed during a given search session. This has inevitably brought up the issue of violation of privacy. As a response, Google Vice President of Product Management for Advertising Susan Wojcicki states,
"That is not something that we have participated in, for a variety of
reasons... We believe that task-based information at the time (of a user's
search) is the most relevant information to what they are looking at. We always
want to be very careful about what information would or would not be used."
Aside from the issue of a potential invasion of privacy, Google is also a bit wary of varying searches by users at any given time. In an effort to attempt to pick up on user tendencies, Google has been intentionally placing ads on pages of users based on their current and previous search as sort of a test run.
Google is well aware of the issues at hand for this process, as Wojcicki acknowledges that Google has been hesitant about drawing too many conclusions about users from search terms at anytime.
