Future of mobile: knowing which exact dollars are effective

Crumbling cookie image from:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigKej8dB4HCPLG8TJO9E8rVt9AYKnqfBfP99_JuduBRugd9gcsIadI4NTprcPZaUq9umcvJadeFnx9-02qsNGMiCyeWu_ma_9d8m1V4ghgBDTUs6V3X_zXCRqe-3AwewPH-vrdtW7zZyUc/s1600/Crumbling_Cookie.jpg

Cookies which have been long used in digital advertising will no longer be the “lifeblood of digital advertising," said in an Adage article by John McDermott. New technologies that are emerging will eventually replace them. The announcement of a mobile ad startup company, Tapad, said “it closed a $6.5 million series B funding round led by venture capital fund Firsthand Technology. By analyzing hundreds of data points including device type, browser type and content source, Tapad says that it can target consumers across devices with 70% to 75% accuracy.”  This is unreal!  Tracking people’s behavior on a laptop will no longer rely on cookies and go beyond this basic form of tracking. 

Something that I was unaware of is that “all web-enabled devices have a media access control address that can be tracked by a Wi-Fi receiver.” This is more than frightening.

“The future [of mobile] is that we’ll know which exact dollars are being effective,” said Nihal Mehta, CEO and co-founder of social intent targeting startup LocalResponse.

Consumers can be targeted based on what they share. For example, if I use my twitter account to announce that I am pregnant, more than likely I will be served an ad soon that is related to the topic of pregnancy such as an offer to subscribe to Parents magazine. 

Tapad will try “to replace cookies by aggregating information from the billions of ad requests sent through ad exchanges and analyzing the data across hundreds of categories including device ID, IP address, language settings and time of day.” But even with millions of bits of data and thorough analysis, tracking users across devices has not been perfected. Drawbridge claims it can identify users across various devices with a 60 to 70 percentage accuracy while its competitor, AdTruth, “says its cross-device tracing accuracy is between 80 to 85 percent. 

As tracking becomes more accurate, consumers need to be aware of the tools and techniques being used to target them and to what extent do these technologies invade their privacy.

McDermott, J. (2013, March 21). Can mobile targeting ever be as accurate as cookies on the desktop? tapad, drawbridge, localresponse and others hope so. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/digital/mobile-targeting-accurate-cookies-desktop/240464/