Personalized Advertising

Personalized advertising is a technology that allows advertisers to target their advertising to a specific individual based on their purchase history. This allows advertisers to focus their advertising and promotions directly to individuals rather than general advertising. This new concept is particularly popular for on line shoppers. An example of how this new technology works is as follows: When a consumer visits an e-commerce site and looks at a particular item, say a new pair if Nike golf shoes, a cookie is placed in that person’s browser, linking it with the golf shoes. When that person, or someone else using the same computer visits other e-commerce sites, the advertising  system creates an ad for the same pair of Nike shoes.

While this type of advertising may create some concern and discomfort for many consumers, the reality is that it does have its advantages. The first advantage is that consumers are able to opt out. What is interesting is that “While users are given the choice to opt out, few do once they understand how the ads are selected for them, said Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, the chief executive of Criteo.”(Heft & Vega, 2010)

As people understand that this type of advertising is directly targeted to their own preferences, they see the advantage of receiving ads for only the type of items they are interested in. As this type of advertising becomes more familiar to people, It will continue to expand into new areas, which only make all type of shopping more comfortable for individuals.