How Do They Track Us?

Expanding on Professor Easley’s lecture discussing keyword-based Web advertising, Louise Story of the NY Times authored a blog post entitled “How Do They Track You? Let Us Count the Ways” as a supplement to her article “To Aim Ads, Web is Keeping Closer Eye on What You Click” [which was posted by wjg62].

Ms. Story worked with the research firm comScore to measure how much data Web companies can collect from users.

By looking at the data large media companies can collect from Web visitors, one might be able to predict which company will lead in online advertising. ComScore counted five different types of “data collection events” for large media companies. There is a conversation between the user’s computer and the server of the company whenever one of these data collection events occurs, four of which occur on the websites the companies run: pages displayed, search queries entered, videos played and advertising displayed. The fifth data collection event deals with ads on any page on the Web that are placed by advertising networks owned by the media companies, like Google’s AdSense network. These ad networks allow the companies to note the website you are on when they serve you an ad.

For each data collection event, the company might receive information on the page the user was at, the users IP address, and if applicable, the content of the ad. In one month of the study, the largest media companies had the potential to gather data from 400 billion events (Yahoo), 100 billion events (Time Warner AOL), 91 billion events (Google) and 51 billion events (Microsoft). Story’s blog post includes data from the comScore study in graph form, showing that each media company has the power to collect data on users in many different ways.

What does this mean for web users? Many people may consider all of this possible data collection to be invasive and frightening. Several NYTimes users commented on Ms. Story’s blog post with their thoughts on data collection by Web companies, including many expressing discontent. However, it is relevant to consider that not all of the data is retained by the companies that have access to it and much of it is not traceable to individual users. Ms. Story highlights positively that we as consumers receive free services and content via the Web by being shown ads. Another positive way to consider data collection is that we “pay” for our free email and free Web content by letting the companies collect data about us. Ms. Story suggests the possibility that if for example, Yahoo and Microsoft were to merge into one company with combined data on users, consumers might get more or better free services in exchange. It will be interesting to see if more studies on data collection can include the aspects left out of the comScore / NYTimes results and if the data proves useful and beneficial to both companies and consumers.