ITNews

The New York Times posting How Do They Track You? Let Us Count the Ways details some of the ways advertisers are tracking you.

Such targeted advertising requires data, so there’s a good argument to be made that we can spot the companies that will lead the pack in online advertising by looking at the depth of data that large media companies can collect about each of their Web visitor. Here is some more detail about the methodology comScore and I came up with:

(Credit: New York Times)

What is important here is not the precise numbers, but the overall picture that the biggest Internet companies are accumulating many different ways to collect data about users. Many caveats are needed: Not all of this data is useful; not all of it is retained by the companies with access to it; much of it cannot be traced back to individuals.

Check out the posting for more details and caveats.

I’m looking forward to the day when we the people open up our windows and yell out we’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take anymore ad manipulation abuse, then boycott companies that are spending the most trying to manipulate us.

Unfortunately, I think I have a long wait ahead of me.

…John

Google AdWords will soon be penalizing slow landing page load time, in its continuing efforts to improve user experiences.

Read all about it in the Google blog posting Landing page load time will soon be incorporated into Quality Score.

I think the traditional wisdom that Web surfers abandon a site if the first page doesn’t load within 8 seconds is no longer true. High speed Internet connections have most likely increased impatience to 4 seconds or less.

…John