The New York Times is reporting details of Yahoo’s forthcoming new advertising system which will allow targeting of ads based on users’ online activities:
Yahoo said the system, called AMP and still months away from being ready, would greatly simplify the task of selling online ads, allowing Yahoo’s publishing partners, for instance, to place ads on their own sites as well as on Yahoo and on the sites of other publishers in the company’s growing network. Advertisers will be able to focus those ads by demographic profile, geography and online behavior, the company said.
No further details are provided regarding how the behavioral targeting will work. Presumably, it will be something like Yahoo’s beta SmartAds platform, which promises advertisers the ability to “leverage Yahoo’s unique data and insights to deliver personalized marketing messages and drive click-thru rates.” I commented on the privacy and surveillance threats of that program here.
Presumably, AMP will be built on similar monitoring, collection, and aggregation of users’ online activities across Yahoo’s properties. Hopefully we’ll get more details on this soon.
MichaelZimmer.org 