zahir.in

Finally, Yahoo has unveiled its own behavioural advertising platform. The behavioural targeting of ads by Yahoo has been around since the year 2000 but it was recently in year 2006 when the same was improvised with better technology in the US.

It’s said that behavioural targeting may also raise some privacy concerns as it means users actions taken on the websites are being tracked and shared with advertisers. On this issue Prashanth Mehta, vice-president (monetization) Yahoo Emerging Markets said “We have 500 million users globally on Yahoo! and we follow strict privacy policies. With Yahoo Behavioural Targeting, we will ensure that we are meeting local policies on user privacy”.

According to Mehta they have launched behavioural targeting because they believe that the market is ready for it.

According to the report, Yahoo tracks 4 different activities of its users:

1. Searched keywords or key phrases by Yahoo! users
2. Sites and content user have visited
3. Search and banner ads users have clicked
4. Microsites that user have visited

All this information is aggregated and a profile of each user is created so that relevant ads can be served to him on Yahoo’s network. For example, a user searching for a job on Yahoo Search or visiting the Yahoo India jobs page may be served search or display ads which offer him more job opportunities.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS