Yesterday Google announced that they will utilizing the DoubleClick cookie-based tracking technology to bring more targeted ads and better targeting features to adveristers. You can read most the blog and news commentary via Techmeme.
The features are simple:
- Frequency Capping to enable advertisers to say, show my ad to this specific user only X times.
- Frequency Reporting so advertisers can see the frequency data.
- Google says this will provide "Improved Ads Quality."
- And better conversion tracking with "View-Through Conversions".
So, there are many good features here for advertisers. But it also scares many people.
DoubleClick is huge, they run a huge portion of the ads across the web. In fact, some of the ads on this site are powered through DoubleClick. But then, look at the number of sites with AdSense on them. Now combine them. Google will be tracking individual computers from all sites containing a DoubleClick served ad and a Google AdSense served ad. Of course, Google the opt out details.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.