With technology advancing as rapidly as it is, there becomes a sense of responsibility the public, government, and advertisers need to live up to. We all know in the back of our minds that the government keeps track of many, if not all, of our transactions with the fabled "red flag," but who would believe advertising would do the same. It might be anonymous, but using cookies to track our movements throughout the Web makes me feel like we are being 'low jacked' by Nike and P&G. We probably know what Osama Bin Ladin is searching over the web, but not where he is. Although, this is not much different than traditional marketing. Research would show advertisers what programs we will probably be watching or if we like sports or even what toilet paper a 26-year-old male living in Illinois would use. It is where this new age of advertising is going that worries me: I saw a program the other day where doctors are using nanobots implanted in peoples' brains to help reverse the effects of Alzheimer's and in the future they will be used to fight the common cold. They could upload programs to these Alzheimer's patients to keep the nanobots up to date. Wouldn't this be an advertiser's dream!I delete my cookies and history at least once a day because I do not like the idea of people tracking. Although I have not deleted them in the past day and at least a third of my cookies are ad related:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/abmr.nethttp://www.atlassolutions.com/http://adinterax.com/site/index.bhtml After looking through my cookies and history of web surfing I have come up with a set of products that advertisers could successfully target to me:
- Electronics-PDAs, entertainment systems, and video equipment.
- Fantasy sports
- Concert and sports tickets
- Fun and interesting viral videos
- Apparel
The fact that search engines are selling us is strange, but cell phone companies do the same, and in essence TV networks do it as well. Even though we are anonymous to these advertisers it still has a feeling that we are being stalked and brainwashed into buying their products. Remember in high school when that one weird person had a crush on you and would be relentless until you finally gave them a date, that is what this feels like. It would be nice if we could get rid of these pervasive ads the same way I did Margaret, by making out with her better looking friend!
posted by SouperStar @ 8:17 AM
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