The Wall Street Journal recently conducted and reported on research that surfing the Internet starts a process that “passes information about you and your interests to tracking companies and advertisers.” The Journal conducted a comprehensive study that assessed and analyzed a broad array of cookies and other on-line surveillance technology ( such as beacons)that companies are deploying on Internet users. The article suggest “that the tracking of consumers has grown both far more pervasive and far more intrusive than is realized by all but a handful of people in the vanguard of the industry.”

They suggest that some of the tracking files were so detailed that they verged on being anonymous in name only. They enabled data-gathering companies to build personal profiles that could include age, gender, race, zip code, income, marital status and health concerns, along with recent purchases and favorite TV shows and movies.

Third party companies or resellers such as Blue Kai, EXelate and Lotame and others resell this data to marketers that want to target internet users by behavior and demographic characteristics. 

Much of the buzz around this article and related blog posts has been negative as you might expect.  However, in future posts, I would like to explore the value side of using behavioral targeting to match together consumer and marketer. 

Please join me in this conversation!