On the 14th of October during the innocent weekly Friday drinks at Deepend our genius Technical Director Pip Jones enlightened us all about cookie-based data. He illustrated this with a great visualisation of how the 3rd party cookies are snooping on our internets: http://collusion.toolness.org/.
Now for all us who aren’t so technical this was both mind-boggling and eye-opening information. I had no idea this was going on! Companies tracking my every ‘click’ to target the advertising I should be viewing. Geesh! Here I thought I was an individual and made my own choice. All right…who am I kidding, I tend to ‘just do it’ and ‘think I’m worth it’. But still, this was new information I had to get my pretty little head around.
Meanwhile, the weekend passes and I think nothing of it. Till I stumble upon a article in NMA. Not only is this 3rd party cookie snooping going on but companies (Videology in this article) do it full-time. The article states: “Videology’s video ad platform, which launched in the UK in January this year, accumulates cookie-based data based on people’s IP addresses, then matches it with similar data supplemented by third parties, including Experian and Axiom. This means it can serve personal ads to viewers related to details including location, gender, age, browser history, and many more, according to McLachlan” [Videology newly appointed commercial development director].
WOW! So on a friendly Friday with a glass of wine I hear about this cookie snooping and less than a week after I see a company talking about it like it’s business as usual.
It has me thinking, how much fun could I really have with this. How crazy could I make my click history? What kind of cool advertising could I make myself privy to? The mind titillates at the possibilities. Yet, for some reason I’m also very concern about this invasion, should I be concerned that companies can do this? I’m not going to pretend to be an expect and have the answers, I just find this revelation of information something to be considered.
Think what you want of it, I’m still trying to decide how I feel about it all.
Respectfully,
Elle Olivier
Marketing Co-ordinator
