Charter to do Ad Targeting to Customer Base

Well now it looks like Charter Comm is going to start doing targeted ads based on customer searches. Earth shaking? No. Google already does this. And I fully expect Google to pursue this at the wireless end as well. But the think is we are getting to the point that we are not far from the scene in ‘Minority Report’ where an ad stream follows you thru life. Nagging you constantly.

[HSI] Charter to monitor surfing, insert its own targeted ads

I just received a letter from Charter informing me of an “enhancement” that I find very disturbing. They are going to monitor the websites I visit and the searches I perform, and substitute their own ads for the ones that would otherwise be displayed on the page. The privacy implications of this are obvious. Although Charter claims that my personal information will remain confidential and that my online activity will never be linked to my personal identity, I find that completely disingenuous. There is no way the system can work without tying it to my IP or MAC address, which is inextricably linked to my identity.

There are also performance implications. If the system is analyzing every page download and substituting its own ad server links for the ones originally in the page, what is the performance hit? Do we really think Charter is going to invest in more network equipment to compensate for this?

Finally, I have to believe that ad-supported website publishers are also disturbed by this and hope they will communicate this to Charter (FWIW).

The letter does mention that you can opt out via setting a cookie by going to »www.charter.com/onlineprivacy.

The problem as I see it is that the barrage is a game of diminishing returns. One of the biggest reasons quoted why people like their DVR is that they can FF thru the commercials! Pretty soon somebody is going to come up with a scheme that blanks out the appropriate [DIV] flags that include Google and Charter ads. Consumers are having a commercial version of pilot cockpit fatigue.

Linky.