So it would seem that everyone is tracking me...

Not only do online advertising networks place cookies on your site that track your web activity, but practically every website you visit tracks you themselves and collects extremely detailed and informative data. Anything from the version of Flash installed on your computer to your location is collected and recorded. This practice is known as web analytics, and is common practice among websites today.

Tracking your visitors behavior is quite simple. Although there are hundreds of web tracking services available for free to website owners, Google Analytics is among the most used. I signed up for Google Analytics and placed the tracking code on this blog.



As you can see from the screenshot of my Analytics page, I have had 31 visits and 39 pageviews to this blog. Pageviews is a higher number because it accounts for repeat visits to the site.



As I stated before, web analytic software collects a vast amount of information about the visitor and his/her machine. I am able to see how many visitors use each Internet browser. This can prove beneficial to web designers. If they know what browser the majority of their visitors are using, they can create better webpages that take advantage of that particular browser's capabilities and create a better web surfing experience for their customer.

As I stated before, I had 31 visits to the blog, but nearly all of them were because I had friends and family visit this site for a few seconds merely to give a boost to my numbers. The majority of those visitors did not come to this blog becuase they were interested in the content, nor did they stay long enough to view any of it. The practice of creating "fake" visitors is known as click fraud.

Click fraud becomes an issue when organizations are paying to advertise one different websites. Where click fraud has been making news lately is on websites such as Google and Yahoo who offer pay-per-click programs to advertisers. A recent article in BusinessWeek discusses this issue and how advertisers are become less trusting of the glamorous pay-per-click programs that these sites tout. Advertisers are losing money because "entrepreneurs" are setting up click fraud rings that basically allow them to click multiple ads over a period of time having no intention in visiting the site they clicked or even receiving any information from it. When this happens, the advertiser ends up paying for the click. The advertiser loses money, while Google, Yahoo, and others make money as well as the one doing the clicking. Critics of Google and Yahoo say they are not doing enough to prevent this because they profit from this practice due to the fact that more advertisements are being clicked on, regardless of the intention of the one clicking it.

With all the web analytic software available today, Internet advertising networks should have the resources to ensure advertisers that their money will be well spent. I can only see them moving in that direction, since the invention of pay-per-click search marketing has been a gold mine for sites such as Google and Yahoo. To allow these programs to lose their appeal would be suicide.

Have I died and gone to hell?

Please....YouTube I beg of you...Remove this nonsense now!!



On the other hand, I would applaud you for showcasing this video on your homepage..



The only thing that Chris Crocker has accomplished is show us that there is no way in hell to predict what will kind of Internet content will be successful at drawing viewers and capturing the attention of millions. Nearly 8 million have viewed his video so far, and It will most likely reach 10 million by the weekend.

Internet advertising and content creation has come a long way since its beginning a few decades ago, but there is still a lot we do not know about it. Exhorbitant amounts of content is created daily and posted on the web hoping to be discovered by surfers and turn their respectable creators a profit. As an advertiser, we must basically take a shot in the dark by sponsoring content that is relatively unknown, hoping to have discovered the next gold mine.

There is no formula, no standard, no set method of predicting what will be popular online, what will bring us acceptable returns, and what will fail miserably and most likely result in us browsing the Employment section of our local papers the following Sunday. We must go by what we are told, how the creator of the content we are considering sponsoring "sells" us their website and convinces us that dropping several million will enhance our brand health and establish a reputable web presence. Many times the numbers look good on paper, but they just dont pan out.

Such is the case with Second Life. 7 million subscribers? Sounds pretty good to me! Oh wait, only 4 million of those are unique, and only a handful actually log in regularly, oh snap! Can we cancel that $4 million check? A recent article in Wired Magazine explains this scenario. Several multinational corporations such as Coke and IBM have built a presence on the Second Life virtual world only to find that there arent really that many people browsing their areas in the first place. It is interesting to read this article, because Second Life was something that we considered placing ads on last year during our AAF campaign. (I am glad we didn't)

The World Wide Web is an unpredictable playground. Companies want to establish themselves online and sponsor and create content that is going to attract members of its target market. How they can successfully accomplish this is an unknown science. Brands need to invent something that is not only fun and engaging, but has lasting appeal that will keep visitors coming back even months after they originally came.

Back to Chris Crocker, I bet YouTube is kicking themselves for not having their advertising program fine tuned and in place. From what I understand they are developing a system that allows advertisers to place messages onto the content itself. Short 15 minute clips could be embedded before the actual video, forcing the viewer to watch it. Another method was for the advertiser to place its message on the bottom fourth of the actual video, and the message would be there while the video is playing. As far as finding a suitable sponsor for Chric Crocker? Well I can only imagine that Perez Hiilton would fit that bill.

Banners...Ugh.

Banner advertising is the traditional, tried and true form of Internet advertising. What does that mean? It means it is also one of the hardest mediums to create for, advertisers must be willing to spend a lot of time and resources into creating an ad that will catch the viewers attention and get them to interact with it. Banner ads are everywhere and placed on virtually every website you visit today. They are usually placed at the top or side of the page, out of the general content area. Therefore, it is possible to not even notice an ad that is there.

I personally hardly ever notice a banner advertisement. If it is a static image, it's pretty much guaranteed I will not recall what the ad was for. Static banner ads are pretty much a thing of the past for that very reason, and the majority of Internet users are now on broadband connections, so animated ads are possible. I seldom click on a banner ad, but when I do it is becuase something caught my eye and provided information for a product or service that I was possibly interested in. (Even though I didn't know I was at the time). To me, that's what good banner advertising is, an ad that features both the product and something that will engage me. Many ads are engaging, but fail to ever show the product in hopes of getting you to click the ad.

Like I said before, I am most likely to click on banners that engage me from the start, and that I kow what product they are for. Banners ads that I remember clicking recently are for new models of automobiles, computer or Ipod related products, and financial/banking services.

Below is an advertisement that I would most likely engage myself in, and possibly click on to find out more information:



Not only is the ad for a car, when will generally spark my interest, but it allows me to type in actions that the car can perform. Very cool.

The article Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings was a very interesting read. A study was performed tracking the eye movements of web survers. They found that most people were completely blind to banner advertisements, and they were only focusing on the actual content of the ad. This poses a problem for advertisers, and advertising professionals. We want our ads to be engaging and clicked, but also ethical. Another point the article brought up was that the most clicked banner ads are ones who lie to you, make you think it is something actually on your computer, or disguise themselves as content on the webpage you are visiting.

In my opinion, Google's Adsense in a way is deceiving. If you have ever seen a site with Adsense ads placed on it, you will notice how they are generally just text links embedded within the content of the site, and usually always relevant to the site's content. Usually it will say "Sponsored Links" or something similar above them in a light gray color so it isn't as noticible. Is Google Adsense an unethical form of advertising? Do you think it tricks web surfers into clicking through?

Tracking my every move...

Behavioral targeting is one of several targeting approaches used by online advertisers. It is highly effective but is viewed by some as an invasion of privacy that raises serious concerns. Behavioral targeting works becuase ad networks place a cookie on your computer when you view one of their ads. They are then able to record your daily Internet usage, and what kinds of sites you visit most frequently. This way, the next time you visit a site that publishes one of their ads, they are able to display ads they think will be more interesting to you, and perhaps recieve a click through. Not only do they monitor the sites you visit, but the searches you make on search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

After viewing the cookies that were stored on my computer, I found several that I believe are potentially ad networks and tracking cookies.



Commission Junction is a ValueClick owned company that manages both online marketing channels and affiliate programs. An obvious ad network cookie.



HitBox sounded very suspicious to me. I did a search on Google for HitBox and I found an article about Internet traffic monitoring software called HitBox. One could conclude that the two are related, as I have never visited a site titled HitBox. It's nice to know I'm being watched.




Sponsor.com? Need I say more?

My browsing history is somewhat diverse. I visit social networking sites, read a lot about the latest consumer electronics on the market, national and world news, politics, graduate schools and contuing education programs, and many others. Some product categories that I believe could potentially be marketed to me through ad networks include:
Any type of consumer electronic merchandise (televisions, computers, music players, dvd's, cd's, etc),
Books or magazines with social commentary such as Newsweek, Time, or anything else current,
Online undergraduate and graduate degrees such as University of Phoenix Online.

I think that legal and ethical concerns can arrise from the use of tracking cookies by ad networks. For the advertiser and the publisher, it is ingenius in the fact that it ensures their ads are viewed and the response rate will be higher. For the web surfer, it is just someone else who knows what you are doing online. Your ISP, the Government (you know it), AND ad networks. Secure and stable networks SHOULD be in place to ensure that the information collected by these networks is not stolen.