The Political Ad Practice Insiders Want to Keep Secret – ClickZ

My cookie says I am a moderate Democrat soccer dad who is a “triple prime” voter. (Look it up, if you’re not a political geek like me).  Folks who are paying attention to the privacy issues around behavioral advertising are very focused on ads targeted based on the Web sites you have visited.  But, in fact, more ad dollars are probably spent on appending offline data like the political data discussed here, as well as data from the big data brokers or data about your customer relationships with your bank and stores you frequent.  Any industry self regulatory solutions or legislative proposals should recognize that basic cookie clickstream targeting was state of the art 9 years ago.  The industry has moved far beyond, but the discussions seem frozen in the past and dont seem to consider the far more complicated world of online data use today.  Jeff Chester ‘s blog is a must read for an understanding of how sophisticated and complex some of the online targeting has become.  It is true that some of the folks Jeff documents who are claiming to target ads based on brain waves and eyeball movements are probably full of hot air, but anyone who thinks we are talking about simple anonymous cookies helping choose a Nike ad for the sports site surfer is living in the last decade.