Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 10, 2008 | Share This |

A story published in the New York Times today uses comScore data to describe how companies track Internet users for the purposes of online behavioral ad targeting. ComScore noted the online data-collection potential of 15 media companies like Yahoo and Conde Nast - namely, looking at searches, display ads, videos, and page views along with the number of ads each company can display on its network.

According to the Times, Yahoo’s huge network of sites means the company collects 110 billion “data events” (a zip code or a search query, for example) each month, or 811 pieces of information for each user. In contrast, older media companies with a web presence have far less data. Conde Nast’s websites, for instance, only collect 34 data events per user each month, and the New York Times website’s number is 45.

Below is a breakdown of some of the companies comScore looked at. Note that MySpace beats eBay and is neck-and-neck with AOL. The Times/comScore data is here, along with a little more background.

Note, also, that the comScore data leaves out a couple of very important points of potential data collection. From the NYT’s Bits blog:

There are other ways these companies obtain data that comScore was unable to capture. The two largest ways left out here are ad-serving data (from the likes of Microsoft’s Atlas and Google’s desired partner DoubleClick) and user-volunteered data. By the latter, I mean the information that users enter when they register for sites or e-mail accounts as well as all the juicy details they post on social networking pages.

It’s certain this information could significantly change the chart above, particularly when it comes to social networks. But perhaps bigger than the struggle to wrangle all this data is making people feel okay about their private information being used this way. In another piece, the Bits blog shows that AOL finds an emissary for ad targeting in… a cute penguin cartoon character.

Topics: Advertising: Behavioral, Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Online |