Data via Web providers by Claudia Sonea

Since the invention of TV and programs' broadcasting the primary means of making money has been to introduce an ad. There is no doubt that advertisement is a very profitable business for both the owners of TV channels and for the advertisers. Nowadays, the Internet is not only a way of communicating, but also offers the possibility to do your shops, book for a plane or a trip, buy tickets to a movie at the cinema or a football game, a workplace and fulfills even the functions of a TV; therefore it has become the main target of advertisers who seek to find ways of getting in touch with people's interest and needs, while respecting their privacy. Silicon Valley startup NebuAd Inc, has designed a system that peers inside Internet traffic and that makes the outdated cookies (tiny tracking files dropped by Web sites on visitors' computers) seem a toy for children. The cookie tells only the site visited and lead to the apparition of ads in connection with the sites visited, while NebuAd through Internet service providers (ISPs) can have an insight view, seeing everything customers do online and studying what they do there and what they hunt for on search engines. This way it can offer specific details on the interest of people. There is still unknown how many ISP collaborates with them and the only thing certain is that the providers representing millions of customers and that run NebuAd's system get a share of the revenue from advertising NebuAd places, according to CEO Bob Dykes. In the context of someone being able to find out what other people browse, what they read, which items they put in their shopping carts but fail to buy, the concerns about privacy are bound to appear. Although some of the techniques used by NebuAd are not that new, many of the retailers already launch "clickstream analysis" tools that monitor what customers do on a given site, NebuAd offers a much more insight perspective and it has to mitigate some of the preoccupations. Dykes pledges his company doesn't compile lists of sites that people have visited or what they did online. Instead uses a sort of meters measuring the interests of how many times the same thing was searched or how many sites with the same subject have been visited and so on and so forth. Also, it doesn't read e-mails or postings on social networking sites and the data grabbed via a Web provider is fed into a cryptographic system known as a one-way hash, producing a string of code that supposedly cannot be reversed to identify a consumer. In addition Dykes told the providers to offer their clients the option to not have the NebuAd introduced in their system. If the new system is better than the cookies used by powerful players as Yahoo Inc., Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Microsoft Corp. or DoubleClick Inc. Tom Soevyn, CEO of Focalex Inc., a marketing agency that places ads with NebuAd is in favor of the system. However, a problem might occur if the customers feels that the privacy is violated, although it is not, according to David Hallerman, a senior analyst for eMarketer. Stay connected and find out if you are one of the multitude of people being tracked by NebuAd. Enjoy!

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071210/ap_on_hi_te/sniffing_your_interests;_ylt=AjZKxYexayZ2uFFtx0YESrCs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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