Behavior-targeting of Display Ads

This past week, Google announced the quarterly report. Display Ads and Mobile become a significant part of Google revenue source. For Display Ads, Google revenue is $2.5 Billion in the next 4 quarters. Excluding fee paid to partners, it is estimated that Google will earn $2 Billion in the next 4 quarters.

Display Ads was actually born earlier than Search Ads. But Search Ads is much more effective than Display Ads because it captures user intent. That's why Google Search Ads is so successful.

In the past few years, however, display Ads is catching up because behavior-targeting technology. Among behavior-targeting technologies, data is the core part. With user intent data, display ads can be much more effective.

According to a report, Rocket Fuel can lower their eCPA as large as 64%.

Here is the breakdown for different verticals:

• Automotive: 64% lower effective cost per action (eCPA)
• Retail: 24% lower eCPA
• Travel: 37% lower eCPA
• CPG: 50% lower eCPA

I believe that display advertising has a bright near-future as long as it deals with privacy issue well.

Cookie of WiFi at Starbucks Coffee

Recently, Wall Street Journal has a series of articles about behavior targeted advertising industry called What They Know. I sometimes go to Starbucks to use Internet. A few months ago, Starbucks decided to offer free WiFi inside the coffee shop. I am curious what cookies (browser cookies, not eatable cookie) Starbucks WiFi tries to set in your user browser if you use Starbucks free WiFi.

So I enter a Starbucks coffee chop, clear all Internet browser Firefox cookies, visit the wikipedia.org website (WSJ reports that wikipedia does not set any third-party cookie on the user browser), which will be redirected to Starbucks WiFi start page. I accept the Starbucks Term of Use. Then I check the cookies in the browser and find cookies from 7 sites are set. 2 of them are from Starbucks site, i.e., coffeblogs.starbucks.com, and starbucks.com. The other 5 are from third-party, google.com, facebook.com, addthis.com (sharing and bookmarking service), ads.jiwire.com (mobile advertising), and tags.jiwire.com.

Overall, I think behavior-targeted advertising, a.k.a. personalized ads, is a good thing to Internet. It's a win-win-win for users, publishers, and advertisers. For users, they will see more relevant ads and coupons. So ads will become more useful and attractive to users; for publishers, they will make more revenue from advertising, thus produce more high-quality contents, survive and thrive; for advertisers, they will reach users what they really target at, thus improve their ROI (Return On Investment). But I agree that the Internet advertising industry should develop a better way to provide transparency and control to Internet users, although I think 90% and maybe even higher percent Internet users do not really care about behavior-targeted advertising and privacy.

Many people are happy about the free WiFi offered by Starbucks. I hope Starbucks can continue this free service by making some revenue from behavior-targeted advertising.