Advanced Television

US reject behavioural advertising

October 13, 2009

A study revealed that two thirds of Americans reject being tracked online by advertisers. Some 66 per cent do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. Meanwhile, 69 per cent think that there should be a law that gives people the right to know everything a website knows about them, a survey by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley, revealed.

Targeted advertising is different from contextual advertising, which does not involve the maintenance or storage of information about an individual beyond their current online session. Behavioural targeting means collecting and compiling data from and about an individual’s activity.

The issue of behavioural tracking provoked controversy in the UK when profiling firm Phorm conducted trials of its technology with BT.

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