Your Computer Is Watching You!

Are you watching back? Have you noticed anything odd lately?

By: Nate Hemmert

Does it ever feel like the computer you’re staring at may just be watching you back? Well that’s because it is! No, it doesn’t have eyes; it’s not a Transformer, but it can still see you. It knows where you’ve been, how long you’ve been there, and in all honesty, it might even know your interests better than you do yourself. Do you ever wonder how the ads being shown to you are so spot-on? Why does a t-shirt for your favorite band always seem to popping up? It’s called behavioral advertising and it’s the newest form of deadly-accurate advertising. Behavioral advertising, to some extent, is everywhere on the internet. Every page you visit, every click you make, it’s there – although you may not notice it or maybe you’re so used to it that you just don’t see it anymore.

Almost all of us have at least one email account from a large provider, if not quite a few. If you sign on to your hotmail account (or equivalent) the ads are tailored to recent searches you've made. Maybe you've been considering a Vegas trip? Looked up a flight or two? Well now there is going to be a multitude of travel ads all over the place. The scary part is, these ads just so happen to be advertising flight deals from where you live to whatever city you’ve just searched for! You're being tracked every single time you use your internet connection!

A better example than basic email accounts might be the social networking sites. Almost all of us have a Facebook account these days – one out of every dozen people on the planet actually. Facebook, more than any other, is the so-called king of behavioral advertising – “It knows exactly who you are and what you're interested in, because you told it. So if Nike wants its ads shown only to people ages 19 to 26 who live in Arizona and like Nickelback, Facebook can make that happen. In the world of targeted advertising, Facebook has a high-powered sniper rifle.” And in no way is that an exaggeration; Facebook has still not become a public company – there are still no big shot shareholders. Mark Zukerburg, Facebook’s creator and CEO, says it’s not about the money, but more so that he’d rather run things himself than let a bunch of shareholders make the decisions, and he definitely seems to mean it. Although Facebook is a privately held company and doesn’t release financial statements, analysts and journalists estimate Facebook's 2010 revenue stream to be anywhere from $1.1 billion to $2 billion! Yet somehow Zuckerberg is still seen driving a humble and modest black Acura TSX.

If a company or business wants to advertise on Facebook, basically what’s going to happen is: that specific company or business is going to get a monthly demographic report from Facebook. The company is then are able to find out how many people visited their page, what their ages were, their genders, the locations of these visitors, and many other things. With this information, a company can then modify the demographic focus of their advertising. Facebook will then give different payment options based on the selections made. There are options like "Pay Per Click" (CPC) – which means that you only pay Facebook a fee each time a user clicks on the ad that takes them to your page. Then there is also the option to pay whenever someone sees your ad (CPM), whether they actually looked at it or not. It would seem that the “Pay Per Click” or CPC option is better than paying for each ad, regardless of whether 100 people click on it or only 2. Facebook doesn't sell your personal data to advertisers; it uses the aggregated statistics of its millions of users to more effectively target the ads it serves, but still this is a long way from selling personal information – which you’ve given to them willingly by the way.

In the end, each individual user is helping Facebook every step of the way as far as its targeted advertising goes. Every time you change or update something, the advertising on your Facebook homepages and all the other pages you visit will change to suit. These ads change depending on all of your different interests. If you join a certain group or happen to “Like” something such as a new product, a band, a TV show or maybe even a new movie, the ads will again, be tailored to more closely fit your personal interests. Facebook shows each user individually, the ads that best suit them –ultimately increasing the possibility that they will end up clicking on the ad and the company paying for it can, in turn, make a sale. This is an ongoing, ever-changing process too, so rarely will the ads ever be the same.

Since behavioral advertising has a way of being so accurate, a growing concern in the minds of many is just how far this new form of advertising will end up reaching. A teacher once showed me a truly amazing online radio show called “OnTheMedia” from NPR. This broadcast regularly addresses many current issues regarding media in today’s world – although, with the recent funding cuts passed by congress, this show may not be around for too much longer. In a recent episode that was aired, titled Off Target, the topic of discussion was behavioral advertising and some of the ethical boundaries within. The host Bob Garfield discusses the topic with Joseph Turow, professor at UPenn and lead author of a new study on behavioral advertising. Although, I won’t spoil the entire show (it is still available online), Turow puts forth the idea of an episode of "60 Minutes" that is so tailored to the individual that it is has become a different show for each person that views it to exemplify just how far this may go. Although behavioral advertising is still a long way from this, the point hits home and is made more than clear. So what exactly are we supposed to do, right?

You can, realistically, control how much of this tracking is going on to a point. You could turn off "cookies" and restrict privacy settings through your computer. But once you do this your internet experience isn't all that enjoyable anymore. Things like saving your history, temporary internet files, cookies, and all the things like that, all make your internet experience much smoother and that much more enjoyable.

The question here is: where is the line of personal privacy being drawn? In the end, each and every one of us are giving up our privacy and personal information willingly, albeit not always intentionally, so it is an unclear issue at best. Some people enjoy the custom-tailored ads; it helps them see ideas and products they might otherwise have missed. Others don’t even notice the near-creepy accuracy of these ads. With a fully connected global society will this so-called “privacy” even exist anymore?