Fergie's Tech Blog

Claria Alert: Every Click You Make, They'll Be Watching You

And they (Claria) are wrong, wrong, wrong... so very wrong.

Bob Tedeschi writes in The New York Times:

Would you trust a company enough to let it follow your every click online?

Claria, a company once vilified for raining pop-up advertisements across the Internet through its Gator software, is betting its business that the answer is yes. Claria said it would announce Monday the release of PersonalWeb, a service that will let people download a piece of tracking software and receive a home page filled with news stories and other information tailored to their interests.

If a man, for example, downloaded the software and surfed through stories about the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament and car reviews, his PersonalWeb home page would reflect those interests the next time he clicked to it. In addition to showing newer headlines about cars and college basketball, the page might also feature ads from car companies or for jerseys from the man's favorite team.

Claria says that because those ads are so closely aligned to the user's interests and recent behavior, marketers will be willing to pay more than they might on other sites for the ability to reach PersonalWeb users.

posted by Fergie @ 4/02/2006 08:35:00 PM