Sunday, October 21, 2012

How Google Knows Your Life




      Ever get that feeling that someone is stalking you when an advertisement banner pops up on a website and it is full of exactly the things you would buy? Well, you should feel that way because you are being tracked. Google's AdSense keeps track of your website history and pairs that with products that you would potentially buy. Though this would make the average person cringe, it is really nothing to be afraid of. AdSense is a secure and private database that is not released to the public. It is not even released to the person creating the history.
Source: Flickr-Croppy

           To the average consumer, this may seem like a lot of work with little revenue. However,the work only really goes for one side. Google draws in these websites to assign advertisements to by leading with alluring titles such as "Get Paid!" and "It's Free!". Who would not want to sign up for something (for free) and get paid for simply doing so.

           AdSense is easy-going for the consumer but is not so much for the ones advertising on the website. Companies bid for certain websites that they would like to advertise on in a real-time auction (which Google facilitates and collects a percentage of each bid -- like any auctioneer). Owners of the website will know which advertisement had gotten the highest bid because the highest bidder is always shown.

           This, in part, is what makes AdSense the most reliable way to advertise. By pairing the highest bidder with the consumer's (website viewer's) search history prior to visiting the website, AdSense produces the most-successful suggestions while also earning a profit from the auction of the ad and paying the owner of the website on which the advertisement is displayed.

            Does using Google's AdSense seem like it would be good to use for the average website constructor?

   Source:Google AdSense
           This source is reliable because it is information and observations directly from the company's website itself.

2 comments:

  1. I don't see a problem with it, all its doing is giving you ads that you are more likely to look into.

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  2. I think this is actually really interesting. I mean, obviously AdSense is a factor in Google's success, which is great for them, but what about the drawbacks? Like you said, it feels like someone's stalking you when advertisers are given access to your search history, and it doesn't always work out the way it's meant to- I google a lot of things, not just things I'm genuinely interested in, so I often get irrelevant ads on the Facebook sidebar that I would probably never click. Factoring that stuff in, how successful is AdSense, really?

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