How evil is the company Revenue Science?
February 8, 2006 12:27 PM Subscribe
How evil is this ad targeting company "Revenue Science?" Would you want to be on a site that placed one of those cookies? Is it actually the kind of thing that might make ads more interesting? Privacy issues? Any security risks to the average web user? Any similarity or history shared with operations like Gator?
I'm guessing these companies rely on third-party cookies to track behavior. If you're concerned about privacy, you can set your browser not to accept third-party cookies (in Firefox this is "Allow sites to set cookies for the originating site only" under the privacy option tab).
posted by justkevin at 1:04 PM on February 8, 2006
posted by justkevin at 1:04 PM on February 8, 2006
Best answer: No more evil than Google?
I suspect this behavioral-targeted advertising is an extension of relevancy-targeted advertising, but instead of targeting an advert on the content of the page they target the ad on your history of browsing. Suppose you spend all morning browsing some auto enthusiast site and then go to a cooking site that's part of their publisher network, it still might make sense to serve you up a banner related to sports cars.
The browser security issues are limited if you're only accepting cookies; if you're not downloading any extensions or desktop apps, there's little to fear in terms to true "malware."
Would you want to browse a site in their affiliated publishers? Eh, who knows. Lots of ad companies already track browsing histories throughout their network, so the data mining aspect isn't new. Have you cared about DoubleClick or Overture in the past? It might be sketchy if a site you do business with shares your account information with their advertising affiliates, but in that case you may simply choose to not do business with them.
There's no affiliation between RS and Gator/Claria though this quote sums up the similarity nicely: "Companies like Revenue Science and Tacoda Systems also offer behavioural-targeting services but they use browser "cookies" instead of software downloads, meaning they could potentially reach more users overall but won't have Claria's across-the-web targeting capabilities." (from here.)
Who knows if this is evil. The majority of what constitutes "evil" just comes down to who has the better marketing department. I'd wager if behavioral-targeted marketing delivers the 200% increase in click-throughs it promises, it won't be long before Google starts in on it.
On preview:
Blocking the ads won't stop the data mining; refusing the cookies will (assuming the publisher isn't sharing your account data with RS.)
Cookies can persist however long they want them to; I don't think there's a theoretical limit on max-age.
posted by Loser at 1:08 PM on February 8, 2006
I suspect this behavioral-targeted advertising is an extension of relevancy-targeted advertising, but instead of targeting an advert on the content of the page they target the ad on your history of browsing. Suppose you spend all morning browsing some auto enthusiast site and then go to a cooking site that's part of their publisher network, it still might make sense to serve you up a banner related to sports cars.
The browser security issues are limited if you're only accepting cookies; if you're not downloading any extensions or desktop apps, there's little to fear in terms to true "malware."
Would you want to browse a site in their affiliated publishers? Eh, who knows. Lots of ad companies already track browsing histories throughout their network, so the data mining aspect isn't new. Have you cared about DoubleClick or Overture in the past? It might be sketchy if a site you do business with shares your account information with their advertising affiliates, but in that case you may simply choose to not do business with them.
There's no affiliation between RS and Gator/Claria though this quote sums up the similarity nicely: "Companies like Revenue Science and Tacoda Systems also offer behavioural-targeting services but they use browser "cookies" instead of software downloads, meaning they could potentially reach more users overall but won't have Claria's across-the-web targeting capabilities." (from here.)
Who knows if this is evil. The majority of what constitutes "evil" just comes down to who has the better marketing department. I'd wager if behavioral-targeted marketing delivers the 200% increase in click-throughs it promises, it won't be long before Google starts in on it.
On preview:
Blocking the ads won't stop the data mining; refusing the cookies will (assuming the publisher isn't sharing your account data with RS.)
Cookies can persist however long they want them to; I don't think there's a theoretical limit on max-age.
posted by Loser at 1:08 PM on February 8, 2006
Response by poster: Just to be clear, I'm not interested in help with blocking my ads. I'm interested in how invasive this particular company's methods are, and just generally what people's impression of their service is. Thanks for the response, majick, but obviously good & evil doesn't enter into it for you :)
I suspect this behavioral-targeted advertising is an extension of relevancy-targeted advertising, but instead of targeting an advert on the content of the page they target the ad on your history of browsing
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm gathering as I read further. They seem to be fairly above board from what I can tell - though correct me if I'm wrong. They don't collect personally identifiable info, they don't cross-reference data across different client's sites (I think), and they respect an industry-standard opt-out of their entire network.
posted by scarabic at 2:28 PM on February 8, 2006
I suspect this behavioral-targeted advertising is an extension of relevancy-targeted advertising, but instead of targeting an advert on the content of the page they target the ad on your history of browsing
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm gathering as I read further. They seem to be fairly above board from what I can tell - though correct me if I'm wrong. They don't collect personally identifiable info, they don't cross-reference data across different client's sites (I think), and they respect an industry-standard opt-out of their entire network.
posted by scarabic at 2:28 PM on February 8, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
Sure, but I'd still block the ads.
"Is it actually the kind of thing that might make ads more interesting?"
No. You ask the impossible.
"Privacy issues?"
No, your ad cookie wouldn't persist long enough to be a useful invasion of my privacy.
posted by majick at 12:59 PM on February 8, 2006