Privacy Digest

Yahoo Unveils Personalized Ads: Let's say a 25-year-old man in San Francisco is shopping online for a hybrid car. Suddenly, a display ad for the Toyota Prius appears on the Web site he's viewing. The ad appears in colors known for grabbing the attention of men his age. The ad lists San Francisco prices and directs him to his nearest dealer for a test drive.

In a bid to keep up with its competition, Yahoo yesterday launched a system to let marketers tailor advertising content to individual users, theoretically making the ads more effective and, therefore, more lucrative for Yahoo.

Behavioral targeting has been the focus for the Internet giants, many of which have offered large sums for online advertising firms that help track Web users' habits. This year, Google made a bid to purchase DoubleClick, Microsoft announced its plans to try to snap up aQuantive, and Yahoo bought Right Media.

Yahoo's advertising service, SmartAds, uses behavioral, demographic and geographic information to try to connect people with marketing that caters to their interests. Yahoo said it is its largest effort to cull information about its users.

In the case of the car shopper, the Web site took his age and sex from his account registration. The search engine identified that he was in the market for a hybrid. His weather channel settings alerted the system that he was probably a San Francisco resident.

Privacy advocates are wary of such systems.

"Personalization doesn't have to be an invasion of privacy if the user is in control of the information," but Yahoo could store the data for an indeterminate amount of time, said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The new technology's proponents say it allows Web surfers to avoid a clutter of random ads. If the San Francisco resident starts checking the weather in Dallas, ads featuring Texas flights and hotel deals may appear -- an argument the company says makes the service useful to consumers.

(Read Original Article - Via washingtonpost.com - Technology.)