In class, we talked about how advertising in search engines such as Google are based on information gathered about the visitors, specifically their search queries. As it turns out, most advertisers decide to place ads on the Web on what they know about you and your interests on the Web. This is contrast to traditional media, in which advertisers choose where to place their ads based on audience size. However on the Web, advertisers can easily access visitor information that is more detailed and can therefore use their advertising dollars more effectively and efficiently. As a result, advertisers are more likely to invest more in advertising on the Web than in traditional media. In a recent New York Times article, the executive vice president of comScore commented that traditional media “aren’t even in the same league,” and “can’t really play in this sandbox.”

Advertising on the Web is getting even more personalized to individual viewers than ever before: Internet companies are beginning to track where visitors are clicking and what sites they are visiting in order to aim ads more effectively. With an increasing number of people using the Web, companies can collect more information on Internet surfers than ever before. Web searchers by Americans has “nearly doubled since summer of 2006, to 14.6 billion searches in January.”

This new approach has proven to be a lucrative one - Yahoo!, the Web company with the largest amount of visitors and data collected about visitors, is currently discussing possibilities of a merger with AOL, while Microsoft is reportedly willing to pay $41.2 billion to acquire the company.

While Web companies and other media companies talking big bucks, the protection of consumers’ privacy is equally important to discuss. Some are questioning the ethical aspect of this highly personalized technique of placing advertisements. Some companies, such as AOL, lets visitors opt out of ad targeting. Google visitors can edit search histories linked to their visitor names, and Yahoo is working on obscuring people’s computer identification addresses altogether.