Web Companies build detailed profiles for highly targeted content delivery

Web portals are building rich and detailed user profiles based off users history, in some cases it’s not wanted. As the web becomes more contextual for ‘me’ (think long tail) of personalization, marketers no doubtly will aim to produce more accurate advertisements for your specific needs.

“Earlier this year, Yahoo introduced a computer system that uses complex models to analyze records of what each of its 500 million users do on its site: what they search for, what pages they read, what ads they click on. It then tries to show them advertisements that speak directly to their interests and the events in their lives.

Yahoo and the many other companies building similar systems say the systems are benign because they typically do not collect personal information like names and addresses.”

More from New York Times on profiling and how this is being used.  Frankly, I don’t mind if I get more contextual ads, however it should be looking at my overall trend of usage, not just a small segment of data. Privacy still remains an issue, just days after AOL released search logs.

Are you ok with this?  Do you wish to stay Anonymous, or do you prefer to give a little to get more back.  I hope the ‘Paid Paranoid’ Martin Mckeay, a security expert responds.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 at 1:45 am and is filed under Search Strategy, Web Marketing, Web Usage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.