Ad-serving Part 2

As a continuation of my earlier article on basics of ad-serving, I will be dwelling a bit in depth on ad-serving and how it works.

As a first step let’s look at how ad-servers target ads that the user sees on his PC. In a typical online ad display, there necessarily are two ad-servers ( if not more)- the publisher ad-server and the advertiser ad-server.

The publisher ad-sever decides which advertiser’s ad to show. The advertiser ad-server decide which ad to show from among it’s stock of ads.

Going back to our imaginary newspaper of yesterday, the England Journal (EJ). How does the EJ’s ad-server decide which ads a user Roger is going to see? The ads Roger’s browser has show and the ads he has clicked on play a role in which ads Roger sees. Roger’s demographic information – age, sex etc – will also play a role in what he sees. To understand how this can happen, let’s assume that Roger has registered himself on another website with him name, age, sex, kind of work he does etc… Many a publisher shares this demographic information with other ad-servers so that they can demographically target ads.

For example, therefore, a website (publisher) might tell an ad-server that Roger is a male between 35 and 40. And that fact that Roger often visits home and decor websites identifies him as a person who is interested in garden, furnishing etc. Roger might therefore, find that a number of home decor ads start to appear on his website. Roger’s computer IP ( Internet Protocol ) is used by ad-servers as well. An IP address helps identify around what area a PC is located.

Is ad-serving an intrusion into one’s privacy? Do they have your personal details like name sex, email id etc? Not quite. Ad-severs target primarily to an IP address – they do not have any personal details like name, phone number emai lid etc. They primarily target people’s interests, demographics and where people are located.