Student Project Could Kill Digital Ad Targeting

An anonymous reader sends this quote from Ad Age: "[Rachel Law's] creation, called 'Vortex,' is a browser extension that's part game, part ad-targeting disrupter that helps people turn their user profiles and the browsing information into alternate fake identities that have nothing to do with reality. People who use the browser tool, which works with Firefox and Chrome, effectively confuse the technologies that categorize web audiences into likely running shoe buyers, in-market auto buyers, or moms interested in cooking and football. ... It's a bit like the ad blocker extensions of yore, except it scrambles information to trick ad targeters, all in service of an addictive game deemed 'Site Miner,' which allows players to fish for cookies visualized as sea creatures. Players can gobble up cookies Pac-Man style, creating a pool of profile information that has nothing to do with their actual web behavior. ... Vortex features a profile switcher that people can use and share to take on a new identity while browsing the web. 'It's a way of masking your identity across networks,' she said."

Comments

Re:Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads

[mi]

Exactly my feelings. It is one thing to block the ads completely — they waste my bandwidth and RAM, slow down page-loading, and degrade my privacy. But if any ad makes it through anyway, I'd rather it be related to something I may be remotely interested in.

Human evolution could also work

[Murdoch5]

I would like to think in this day and age people are mature enough to ignore targeted ads.

Re:I fully support this!

[Penguinisto]

Then you will not have as many websites.

Only true insofar as quantity. Quality OTOH will likely improve, if you want the truth. Any site that relies (even in large part) on ad impressions for its survival is likely one that has starved itself to death a long time ago, is is barely straggling along.

there are far too many other ways of making income from a website (an internal store, premium content, even donations stand out as examples.)

Making and supporting a web site takes time and money.

So does any other worthwhile endeavor. Doesn't mean it has to have adverts, though.

I am not sure if you remembered how horrable adds were in the late 1990's early 2000.

I beg to differ - it's uglier today.

Turn off all your blockers/add-ins/extensions sometime, and go visit ZDNet or parts of CNET. They stand out as only a couple examples of how a company can jack in a shit-ton of intrusive dancing adverts (where even clicking on what looks like blank space will toss an advert at you). Also note that back in the late '90s you only had popups and cookies at worst (okay, they had Bonzi Buddy or whatever-the-hell-that-was, but that bullshit required your explicit collusion to install).

Today you have to contend with LSOs, stealth "toolbars" that slide in just because you updated Java and weren't paying attention, and other intrusive-as-fuck tracking techniques that slip right by most non-techies. Oh, and I won't even have to mention that now we get to put up with ISP collusion as a matter-of-course (ad-packed redirects for failed DNS lookups, anyone?)

Re:I fully support this!

[Beardo the Bearded]

I'm a military contractor.

I'm also a fitness instructor.

Due to my searches for weaponry, vegas trips, and yoga mats Adsense thinks I'm gay.