danielknox.net

Good analysis by Chris Dixon of difference between intent harvesting ads (think Google text ads) and intent generating ads (think majority of display ads), and how Facebook’s Like button (and the associated interest data that can be inferred from people ‘liking’ things) position Facebook to dominate the display advertising space.

Business Insider covers some interesting research from Rocket Fuel about online advertising, which includes:

#7: Non-contextual advertising can be very effective. We’ve seen Automotive ads work extremely well on Finance content, for example.

TBI Research just published an interesting report on behavioral ad targeting focusing on Yahoo’s “Smart Ads” program.

I was particularly interested in the performance data on the ‘creative optimization’ approach, which uses a user’s browsing history to target them with customized messaging:

comScore’s Digital Year in Review 2009 reports that U.S. consumers viewed 4.3 trillion online display advertisements, including static and rich media ads, during 2009 (as measured by comScore’s Ad Metrix system). This represents a 21% increase over 2008, driven by increases in both the number of people exposed to display ads online (+8%) and the average ad frequency (+12%). What I found interesting about these stats is that the top 10 publishers (shown above) accounted for 1.8 trillion (or 42%), with the thousands upon thousands of other publishers, including all the major newspaper brands (Gannett, Hearst, NYT, Tribune etc), accounting for just 58%.

The Economist had an interesting article this week on the data deluge, in which it argued that, to help users feel like they retain control over their online data, sites need to make more data available to their users:

First, users should be given greater access to and control over the information held about them, including whom it is shared with.

I totally agree that sites should provide greater transparency with respect to tracking and data collection / storage. The Economist highlights Google which allows its users to see what information Google holds about them, and lets them delete search histories or modify the targeting of advertising.

Other sites are increasingly doing this too. For instance, I really like how the Newstogram technology has been implemented on DailyMe.com with a dedicated “My Newstogram” page which shows me what data the site is stored about me, explains how the data will and will not be used, and gives me the ability to correct the data or to opt out of tracking altogether.

Yahoo has similar functionality available through its Ad Interest Manager page (although Yahoo is either tracking a lot less about me or is not as good at determining my interests as they only have me pegged as a generic sports fan).