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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?""
I'm sure that DoubleClick realizes that its tracking database, and the equipment and softawre that compile it, are valuable to certain unscrupulous marketers. It therefore seems highly unlikely that they would "just" shut down. It's much more likely that they'll sell it to another unscrupulous company. I won't stop blocking them yet.... Rather, I'll prepare to block whichever company (e.g. Naviant or Donnelly) buys their tracking system.
You're right, of course -- and given that this is the case, doesn't this seem like a strange move, to get completely out of tracking? Their dart tags had termendous potential for tracking people, given the ubiquity of DC-served ads. What does it really cost them to keep tracking this stuff, besides a few more boxes in back -- which they already own, btw?
Sure, there are other overhead issues here when it comes to analysis or putting a front-end on the collected data, but the one and only time i used dc data in my modeling, i made them give it to me raw, which they did with a little arm-twisting.
Just seems a little baby-bathwateresque, with the hardware and the software already in place to chuck the whole thing. Are they really doing this? And does anyone know why?
PS -- i know they're evil. that makes this seem *more* strange, not less.
god is just pretend.