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Third-Party Advertising

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Internet Marketing and Privacy

For as long as there have been consumers, marketers have gathered information about consumers in order to better target a marketing pitch.  With the advent of Internet advertising in the 1990s, marketers gained another avenue to track consumer behavior to send targeted marketing offers.   This guide provides an overview of the best Web resources for learning about off-line and online consumer targeting practices. It educates you about the data that marketing companies may be gathering about you, and offers advice on how you may be able to control the data that is gathered about you.

Offline Consumer Targeting

For how long have offline marketers have been collecting data on consumers ?  The Consumer ... read more »

Online Advertising Technology

The world of online privacy can often seem overwhelming. Privacy policies written in ... read more »

Third-Party Advertising

Most advertisements on the Web are not served or sold by the sites you see hosting them, but by third-party advertisers. These companies work with Web site publishers to provide the infrastructure technology behind the advertising and often sell advertising on the publisher’s behalf.

Dulcinea's Insight

  • Many of the major third-party advertisers are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). In 2000, the FTC approved the self-regulatory NAI guidelines. The NAI provides a list of its participating companies.
  • At its core, the values of the NAI can be described as “notice and choice.” NAI companies disclose exactly the type of information that they are collecting on you (especially the key difference of whether it is personally or non-personally identifiable information) and then give you the option to opt-out.   
  • An area of online advertising to be wary of is “lead generation” advertising. These ads, consisting of flashing banners promising items such as a “free iPod!” are from non-NAI advertising companies. They often don’t disclose the items you must sign up for to receive the gift in question, and your personal data isn’t secure on these sites. Avoid using them completely.

Dulcinea's Picks

The NAI helps you opt-out of third-party advertising cookies placed by all NAI members at once.  Note that this is achieved by the vendor placing an anonymous, untrackable cookie on your browser; if you subsequently delete this untrackable cookie, you will once again begin to receive advertisements targeted to your Web surfing behavior.
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The Center for Democracy & Technology has a detailed guide to Internet privacy from a privacy advocate’s perspective.
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MediaPost Communications describes how the FTC is cracking down on “lead generation” advertising companies.
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Social Networking Sites and Advertising

Every day millions of Americans freely list personal details of their lives on social networking ... read more »

Search Engines and Advertising

Perhaps just as much as they do with social networks, Internet users potentially reveal private ... read more »

The Future of Internet Privacy

As the future takes shape, there will no doubt be more companies that cross the line in trying to ... read more »

Community Links in Internet Marketing and Security

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