Doubleclick Exits The Ad-Tracking Business

Masem writes: "Cnet is reporting that Doubleclick closed down its ad tracking program as of Dec 31 2001, and is shifting from a media company to research and development for online ventures. Doubleclick claims they had upwards of 100million unique tracking profiles at the height of their run, but with the dot-com bust and lower ad revenue rates, ad tracking ran into the red. Even after the worrisome aquition of Abacus Online (which was rumored to allow Doubleclick to connect online and offline consumer profiles), the company could not turn a buck on ad revenues. Time to remove that 'doubleclick.com 127.0.0.1' from /etc/hosts now?""

Comments

Thank God!

[Quasar1999]

I think I speak for everyone when I say...

THANK GOD!!!

Sorry, no

[Codex The Sloth]

Uh, they're not getting out of the annoying ad business, just the annoying targeted ad.

Re:Sorry, no

[acacia]

What does it really cost them to keep tracking this stuff, besides a few more boxes in back

It isn't cheap, believe me. Last time I checked, the backend system was four clustered Sun 6500's, with Oracle running on one of them and the transform processes going on a couple of others. When I wrote software for their backend systems, we were wrestling with a state file that was over 1 Terabyte. That was with the volume you found in the year 2000. I am sure that the volume has gone up since then, so you have to figure that the cost of additional DASD alone is painful. Not to mention that they may need to scale up the hardware to an E10K or an additional 6500 by now. Then on top of that add additional per CPU licensing fees for some of the software.

If the targeted ad aspect of the system isn't paying for itself, then you can milk a lot more out of the existing hardware and software. Which in this economy makes it a no brainer.

Re:Finally!

[sporty]

Of course

.. you could use junkbuster http://freshmeat.net/projects/internetjunkbuster/

.. use mozilla, you can kill off their cookies and images, there's an option to not download them

this isn't the end of DC, it's only the end of....

[mikester911]

their targeted segment of advertising.

i'm willing to bet large sums of money that they will still be serving ads, just not directly at you anymore....not that you noticed the difference anyway.

I'm surprised no one mentioned this

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to add '127.0.0.1 doubleclick.com' in /etc/hosts, in Mozilla, you can go through a 5 page tabbed wizard which can be used to block connections to doubleclick.com, or so it seems. Read the documentation. You might want to pipe the output of tcpdump to a homemade script to make sure that it correctly blocks what you expect. Why hack a line in a config file when you can have it set up in Mozilla with a GUI interface? And you know that it will work until you do a clean reinstall of your browser, after which you simply repeat the operation.

Re:I'm surprised no one mentioned this

[J'raxis]

Because if I block it in /etc/hosts its gone forever, to everything. Blocking it in Mozilla will not block it if, say, you download some filesharing program that has banner ads on it, or any other program for that matter.

Re:Finally!

[scott1853]

IE 6 can be setup to deny their cookies. Unfortunatelty, you can't add them to your HOSTS file because IE considers a failure to load an IFRAME document means the entire page must have failed to load.

Having read the article...

[dreamquick]

Okay, after reading that article you get the impression that targetting ads based on data capture doesn't work.

First off because of the pain/cost of getting a decent level (read both accurate and large coverage) of data in the first place (e.g. i'd imagine if you were the sort who spends large amounts online frequently you would have opted out either through the regular channels or by simply ignoring all their attempts to track you)

Secondly because their clients couldn't justify the cost of buying a properly targetted ad with the return it generates (it cost approximately 400% more than the standard ad type but only gives an improved yield in the range of 200%-300% if you target it right).

When compared to regular mail advertising, banners will lose out because mail;

a) can be far more targetted/available for most demographics
b) has better coverage
c) has a better chance of being read rather than ignored, skipped or stopped by other means
d) available for most demographics

So what have we learnt from all this?

Well that dblclick may have the technology but the customers will not buy despite the promises, or perhaps the fact that the cost increase was not proportionate to the performance increase. Instead their consumers preferred to go with a random assortment of less targetted ads.

Well that's marketeers for you!

Nope, just use this hosts file

[gad_zuki!]

http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html

ugh... some points

[zama]

DoubleClick is NOT leaving the adserving business. Just the Intelligent Targeting product. DoubleClick will still use cookies, still serve ads using targeted information (each host website can dynamically insert key-values into the ad tags for targeting purposes - demographic or behavioral information that can be targeted to).

What DoubleClick is no longer doing is taking traffic data and putting into a big consortium to find interest segment associations and targeting. This is the exact same thing that offline marketers do - you apply for the credit card and buy a sweater at Gap, that goes into a db with your age and location and other info. That info is then contributed to a data pool which also has purchasing habits of Pottery Barn, Ikea, William Sonoma, etc. The various members in the consortium can then purchase lists of various demographics for targeted direct mailings and catalogs.

I don't think the info is sellable - what good is someone else's cookie data? It's not like you'll be able to serve ads to a doubleclick cookie unless you somehow take over the domain. And there's no personally identifiable info in that database either.

.bartacus

Re:ugh... some points

[zama]

The directors and shareholders of Doubleclick recently bought Abacus databases containing millions of personal user profiles collected from those credit card customers (etc.) that you mentioned. Real and hard data. My guess is that they did not buy that business simply to continue running it as is. They will want to turn a sizeable profit with that purchase.

>>>>>

Word. The Abacus purchase was intended for four things:

1. Offline/Online Identifiable profiles. Nixed after DCLK bought Abacus
2. The brand and clients. Abacus is a respected company in offline marketing with some major marquis clients that DCLK wanted to snag online too.
3. The people. Abacus has done some awesome statistical modeling and predictive work - DCLK wanted their gray matter and expertise for online.
4. A solid investment. Abacus was well into profitability and is a valuable investment in and of itself.

Number 1 got nixed, number 2 achieved, number 4 ongoing - that leaves Number 3. DoubleClick is focusing on technology and is coming out with buying/planning software of which data and modelling is integral. Look at their other recent purchases - @Plan and Comscore (planning and analysis products).

>>>>

What elso do they have? Well, the article states "In the last 16 months, DoubleClick has worked to deflect its dependence on the sickly advertising market. It has built up its research, data and technology divisions while slowly dismantling its media division."

>>>>

This qoute really really really needs to be clarified. The Media division at DoubleClick _sells_ inventory. Repping website inventory was DCLK's original and core competency. The dismantling of that division in no way or form changes DoubleClick's focus from adserving technology and the supporting research, planning, and market analysis tools.

>>>>>

So they have surfing habits, e-mail identities and hard real-world data.

>>>>>

Not much in the way of email identities actually. The data for the DARTmail products belong exclusively to the clients. Technically, the data resides on DoubleClick's servers but realistically they can't use that data without an uproar surpassing that of the Abacus/PII flap.

>>>>>

Think about it. The "not enough money for more servers/equipment" lame excuse is a red herring.

>>>>>

Well, the reason they are shifting their focus is because the margins are to slim, part of which is infrastructure costs. Think about it - their dbs capture every single ad they serve to every single person and records at least 8 different datapoints with every event. Plus they track click, post-view, and post-click activity. That's an insane amount of data. It's mind-bogglingly huge. Now the issue isn't the storage of all that data - it's being able to use it. That is the major technology hurdle.

>>>>>

My guess is that in addition to keeping their online business _sans_ those pesky media attracting privacy issues (legal problem solved!), they will quietly be working in the investment community with their combined data and profiles to invest into and launch new online business ventures that target specific nich markets. And that is where they will get their return on investment.

>>>>

That's a good theory.

Re:Finally!

[kilroy_hau]

Unfortunatelty, you can't add them to your HOSTS file because IE considers a failure to load an IFRAME document means the entire page must have failed to load


Not true, i've got the following entries on my HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1 ad.au.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.ca.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.de.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.fr.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.jp.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.nl.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.no.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 ad.uk.doubleclick.net

(among others)

When I visit a page that has the evil IFRAME , I see the page that informs me of a 404 error, ON THE IFRAME, the rest of the page is loaded as usual.

Re:Finally!

[BadDoggie]

So you got the Hosts file and didn't bother getting eDexter? I guess half of those "M$-users SuX0R, Linux d00dZ R00l3Z" trolls aren't after all.

For the uninitiated (and for those who aren't forced to use Win at work), eDexter acts as a local-only HTTP server (not accessible through the Net)which replaces the empty boxes caused by 127.0.0.1 in Hosts and stops the resulting time-outs. eDexter has its own image for the space that an ad uses. The default image is a 43-byte GIF (thin pink bar).

Better yet, it doesn't interfere with a locally-running "server" <gag, cough, choke> like IIS or MS Personal Web Server, which some of us also have to run at work. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

woof.

Of COURSE I'd rather run SuSE (even if it would get me sued), but my company wouldn't exist without closed source. And our security is almost as good as Microsoft's! Like Krusty said, don't blame me; they shove all of this money in my hand!