[ILUG] Advertising in GMail

[Colm Buckley]

On 20 Nov 2006, at 14:00, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> This is very interesting.
> I wonder how finely they can identify you?

Theory and practice diverge somewhat here.  In theory, one could  
reconcile ISP connection logs with IP addresses to identify you as an  
individual (or at least a household) from your IP address, but nobody  
really does this in practice, because a single entity doesn't manage  
both sets of logs.

Google can of course identify you through your cookies, unless you  
disable them.  We have a lot of stuff up on our privacy policy about  
how this information is (and, of course, isn't) used.  Using IP  
address to geolocate someone is notoriously unreliable; and is of  
course further confused by anything proxy-related.  Much more  
reliable to ask the user to volunteer their location information.

> I guess they just go by your ISP, but it's nicely frightening to  
> think google might know all about you.

http://www.google.com/privacy.html

> Incidentally, do advertisers on google pay less if they can reduce  
> their "clientele"?

Adwords and Adsense charge per click, not per view.  Therefore it's  
in everyone's best interests to target the advertisements as closely  
as possible to people who are likely to click on them.  In fact, much  
of our sales department spend significant time convincing advertisers  
to be *more* restrictive in their targeting rules, so as to hit a  
narrower audience, rather than the opposite.  It's counterintuitive  
at first look, but when you realise that ad views which don't result  
in a click are effectively wasted, not to mention annoying, it makes  
sense.

	Colm (not speaking on behalf of Google)


-- 
Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146 / www.colm.buckley.name