A Game They Play

Tell a premium ad network you're willing to pay $4 a thousand and they'll most likely tell you that you'll be on most of their sites but not all. Why?, you ask.

Well, the sites that cost more than $4 in their site list would be left off. Hmm, makes sense. But think about it further. What about the sites that cost less than $4 - how are those averaged out? The truth is that they're not. You'll be on $3, $3.50, and $4 sites, but nothing higher. That isn't right.

Beep! has made a conscious decision to make sure the average of the sites you're on within our network is what you're paying, not the cap of what you're paying. Score one for the good guys :)

Privacy Issues Coming To A Head With NebuAd

The folks at NebuAd are good folks. The reality of their practices is that they don't impact users any more than traditional behavioral targeting. But the reality of their situation isn't good.

When BT was first introduced, the privacy groups moaned. When Google bought DCLK, I moaned (about privacy.) But when a company decided to put actual hardware on ISPs' nodes, intercepting everything every one of those users does online - someone more important than me moaned and got heard.

The limits of BT keep getting pushed because the "if you can, you should" mentality of marketers drives exploration. Now that it's come to a head, marketers will be told, rather than self-set, the boundaries within which they can know what users online are doing.