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Electronic Commerce
I. Advertising models for the web
• What’s different about the web?
• Types of ads
• Come-ons
• New technologies and concepts
II. The digital advertising value chain
• Who’s involved and what do they do?
III. Business processes in digital advertising
• Managing digital advertising
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
I. Advertising models for the web
“Advertising may be described as the science of
arresting the human intelligence long enough to get
money from it.”
(Stephen Leacock, 1982)
“Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill
bucket.”
(George Orwell, 1992)
"Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its
function is to make the worse appear the better."
(George Santayana (1987)
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Current trends in online advertising
Use of larger ad formats increased, with standard sizes
used most often
Skyscrapers and large in-page rectangles were most
common new formats
The standard 468 x 60 pixel banner accounted for 50%
of DoubleClick ads in Q4 (02)
Skyscrapers were 8.3% of total volume
Use of large rectangles grew 300% over the year, but
accounted for 2% of total volume
Morrisey, B. (2003). Online Ads Are Bigger, Richer. CyberAtlas
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/markets/advertising/article/0,,5941_157
6651,00.html
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
In the Q4 (02), rich-media ads accounted for 25% of all
DoubleClick ads
View-through rates rose 47% in ‘02, from .36 % in the
first quarter to .53 % in Q4
This means that users took an action within 30 days of
seeing the ad
Rich media had click-through rates of 2.5% in Q4
Non-rich-media ads declined from .4% in Q1 to .3% in Q4
Online advertising brought in $5.6 billion in 2002
This is ~20% lower than in 2001 ($7.2 billion)
Internet Advertising Bureau
http://www.iab.net/news/pr_2002_12_19.asp
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Total advertising revenue in 2002 was ~$230 billion
Online ad spending accounts for 2.4% of this amount
Overall spending is expected to increase ~2.4% this
year
eMarketer. (2002). Media spending outlook 2003. White Paper. p. 15
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
eMarketer. (2002). Media spending outlook 2003. White Paper. p. 33
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Online ad revenue in the US for Q4 (03) totaled ~$2.2
billion
Revenues for 2003 are ~$7.2 billion
The year-to-year growth for the Q4 and 2003 were 38%
and 20% respectively
The previous record quarter for interactive advertising
was Q4 (00) with $2.12 billion in revenue
The net led all other advertising segments in percentage
revenue growth for the year
Internet Advertising Bureau (2004). Interactive Ad Revenue Sets
Record With Best Quarter Ever.
http://www.iab.net/news/pr_2004_2_12.asp
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Spam: two views of unwanted commercial e-mail
Ferris Research estimates that it cost U.S. corporations
$8.9 billion in 2002
Loss of worker productivity; consumption of bandwidth
and tech resources; and use of technical support time
A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey (n=2,500)
found that workers encounter little spam while on the job
53% said all of their incoming email was work-related
71 % said "a little" of the e-mail they receive is spam
Nearly 60% receive fewer than 10 e-mails per day and
half said “none” of their work e-email was spam
Morrisey, B. (2003). Spam Cost Corporate America $9B in 2002 .
Cyberatlas.
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/applications/article/0,,1301_
1565721,00.html
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Most Annoying Types of Spam
Type
Percentage
Pornography
91%
Mortgage and loans
79%
Investments
68%
Real estate
61%
Software
41%
Computers and other hardware
38%
None
3%
Base: 2,221 U.S. adults, 11.22.02 through 12.02.02
Source: Harris Interactive
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/applications/article/0,,1301
_1565721,00.html#table
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
What’s different about the web?
On the WWW, you “will slowly discover that nothing less
than an entirely new publishing and advertising economy
is taking shape in this information-based terrain.”
(Schwartz 1996)
A“new business paradigm is required in which the
marketing function is reconstructed”
(Hoffman and Novak 1996)
“To achieve the goal of providing information, advertising
itself must change”
(Coalition for Networked Information’s Working Group
on Advertising 1996)
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
The basic questions are:
How can marketing content best be delivered to online
consumers?
What works in the online environment?
Can traditional methods and models be ported to the
web?
Will techniques used in print and electronic broadcast
media work on the web?
How can return on investment be measured?
Will standard methods used to track the success of
advertising in offline media work on the web?
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Two principles about web advertising influence many
advertising practices
The direction of the advertising message is reversed
In traditional advertising, the message is imposed on
a passive consumer
We are delivered to the advertiser in a one-to-many
model of marketing communications
On the web, the consumer
Chooses to view an advertisement
Takes actions to uncover the information the
advertiser wishes to deliver
Enters the “clickstream” (taking further action)
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Also:
Content is important as the core of the advertising effort
Traditional advertising uses brief distilled messages to
catch and hold our attention
It depends repetition to deliver the message
Content is minimized and simplified to fit time
constraints of media or the size constraints of the
page
Packing the maximum amount of meaning into the
minimum amount of content is critical
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Web-based advertising has different constraints
emphasizing content and presentation
Time and page size limitations become less important
Presentation, content, navigation, and flow become
more important
Space (real estate) becomes important
Content must be dynamic, current, substantive, and
relevant to a variety of audiences
It must catch the viewer’s eye in 10 seconds or less
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Spending on web advertising beginning to recover
What is needed to rebuild the web-based advertising
industry?
Standardization on advertising formats, sizes and
duration
Established, industry-wide principles for traffic
analysis
Reliable and valid procedures for capturing consumer
responses to advertising
Reasonable media pricing models
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Interactive Advertising Bureau’s standardization model
728X90
300X250
180X150
160X600
http://www.iab.net/standards/uap/index.asp#
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Banners provide “passive advertising exposure”
The decision to view is not made by the consumer
The banner is displayed randomly or in response to
consumer actions (search terms…)
The more targeted the display, the more likely is the
click-through
Key factors motivating click-through include
Size
Position
Motion
Color
Novelty
From: http://www.addesigner.com/
For: http://www.deleteddomains.com
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
This is the first banner ad
It’s for ATT and was on Hotwired in 1994
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
A banner for Redbook Magazine on Lycos 10.95
http://www.lycos.com
Ad for a TV on Hotbot in 3.00
http://www.hotbot.com
Ad for Red Herring magazine by eye-scream
http://www.eyescream.com/work/21.html
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Banner for the Internet Link Exchange
http://www.bcentral.com/?leindex
Banners found on AltaVista 3.02
http://www.altavista.net
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Animated banner ad from WDVL 3.00
http://www.wdvl.com/
An animated banner from Hotbot 1.98
http://www.hotbot.com
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Electronic Commerce
Animated banner ad from WDVL
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Electronic Commerce
An animated banner from Hotbot
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Electronic Commerce
Pop up and pop under ads
Pop-ups cover the page you are trying to look at
They vary in size and positioning
With scripting, additional pop ups can be triggered by
closing the first one
Pop under ads are positioned behind the page you are
looking at
They will remain after you have left the page that
triggered them
Both are popular because they have a higher click
through rate (8%) compared to banner ads (<1%)
Here are two examples
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Text: you have a few sentences to make your point
Pose a question
Give something away
Play a game
Placement: consider placement on the page
Also, banners must reach your target audience
Search engines are a good location to reach a more
general audience
Duration
How long will it be displayed?
How many times?
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Important concepts:
Visitor: someone who goes to a Web site
The value to an advertiser of a visitor increases as
more information is gathered about him or her
Visit: making page requests on a single site from a
single machine within 30 minutes
Page view: a visitor viewing a page of content
Assumes that asking for the page is viewing it
Ad view: a visitor seeing an ad
Most pages have more than one ad so the number of
ad views is usually greater than the number of page
views
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Hit: A questionable measure of site traffic
Impression: How many times a banner is displayed
Click: When a visitor clicks on a linked object
A click brings the visitor to another page or site
CTR: Click-through ratio
A ratio of the number of times a banner is shown to the
number of times it is clicked on
A CTR of 20:1 means that 1 in 20 people have clicked
on the banner (5% of those who viewed it)
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Cost of web advertising:
Flat fee (ex: monthly charge) is rare and is usually done
for smaller purchases
CPM (Cost per thousand impressions):
You pay for the number of times the banner is displayed
in a time period (month)
20,000 impressions at a $20 CPM costs $400
Purchasing by CPM is the most common method
CPM’s range from $10-$150 depending on the site and
how targeted the banner placement is
Average CPM in 1999: $36 (offline CPM: $6-20)
Average CPM in 2002: $10 (offline CPM: $8-22)
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
The trouble with CPM
You sell a book and budget $3/book for advertising
You pay CPM = $30 and purchase 100,000 impressions
($3,000)
Assume a response rate of .5% (five clicks per 1,000
impressions)
500 people click on the ad during the time the 100,000
total impressions are running
2% purchase the book resulting in 10 purchases
You’ve paid $300 for each book sold
For this to work, the publisher would need to pay CPM =
$.30 rather than $30
How Web advertising works. HowStuffworks.com
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising2.htm
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
CPC: Cost per click-through
You are charged by the click on the banner, not the number
of impressions
Common costs tend to be between $0.02 - $0.10 (from
$0.50-$2.00 in 1998)
Click through rates range from >1% - 8%
CPC = CPM / (CTR x 1000)
If you pay $20 CPM for a banner with a 2% CTR
A 2% CTR means 20 visitors for 1000 impressions
But you pay $20 for each 1000 impressions
CPC = $20 / (0.02 * 1000) = $1.00 for each visitor
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
CPA: Cost Per Action
The price is based on each “action” that a content site
delivers
The visitor is exposed to the target communication
“Action” may be a sale, a lead, a successful form fillout, a download of a software program or a sale
Measured by time on page, number of pages viewed,
number of return visits
The action, price and terms of a CPA purchase are
negotiated by the advertiser and content site
Uses a back end tracking system provided by the
advertiser allowing the content site to view clicks and
actions
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
CPS: Cost Per Sale
The price paid by an advertiser to a content site for each
sale to a visitor referred from the content site to the
advertiser’s site
This buying model is typically tracked with cookies
The cookie is set on the content site
It is read on the advertiser's site at the final page after
completion of one transaction/sale
Typical rates/bounties range between 5% and 25% of the
retail price of the product or service
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Come-ons: what advertisers will do to draw you to the site
Free stuff: this has ranged from CDs to computers
Contests: this resembles offline contests
Free web space: web hosting is a way to develop a
loyal customer base
Free email: this is a way to keep you at a site
Free calendar, scheduling, storage space, bookmarks,
desktop: same here
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
New technologies
Push media
After the consumer has taken certain action, content is
delivered to the desktop
Typically, this involves downloading, registering, and
installing software on your machine
It works together with the browser to send a stream of
content across the screen
Changes in technology (computer power, network
throughput, browser capabilities) have allowed a richer
media mix to be delivered to the desktop
Pointcast, Castanet, Java, Active Desktop and similar
software are the beginnings of push media
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
You customize delivery by selecting channels, format, and
timing of delivery
You develop a user profile that is used to customize the
content
There is a balance between the active and passive user
Once the parameters have been set, push can occur
without much intervention by the user
This may lead to a push-pull model of content delivery
This development is waiting to be exploited by advertisers
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Rich media
A web page ad that uses advanced technology such as
streaming video or downloaded applets that interact
instantly with the user
Also, ads that change when the mouse passes over
them
Streaming email
This is interactive email that contains multimedia but
no plugins
It works on any java enabled browser
Avalon’s radicalmail.com
http://www.radicalmail.com/demo/mediatype.asp?TypeID=2&dem
oID=73
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Standardizing rich media
2/04: 30 leading online publishers (65% of total advertising
inventory) are or plan to be in compliance with IAB’s “Rich
Media guidelines Version 2.0”
http://www.iab.net/news/pr_2004_2_12a.asp
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Interstitial ads
These are a way of placing full page messages between
the current and destination page
They are pages that pop up between what the viewer
is looking at and what they are expecting to get
Viewers, quickly learn at some level to recognize
banner ads and filter them out
Interstitial messages, like TV commercials make
viewers a captive of the message.
Typical interstitials last ten seconds or less where the
viewer is doing nothing but looking at the ad
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
New concepts
Community as a site for ads
Community sites are among the fastest-growing sites
on the net
People who join have decided to become part of a
“neighborhood”
They'll come back and stay for long periods of time
This means customer loyalty and tremendous usage
patterns
This differs greatly from the “drive-by” usage
patterns on search engines and other portals
People stay for, on average, only a few minutes,
and develop no sense of loyalty to a particular site
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Community sites are moving from homesteading to more
task oriented and purposeful types of places
Providing local auctions, third party content (sports and
financial news), ecommerce
Yahoo/Geocities
http://geocities.yahoo.com/home
Tripod
http://www.tripod.lycos.com/
Angelfire
http://angelfire.lycos.com
Problem: ads are linked to local user content
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Smaller community sites
Homestead
http://www.homestead.com
Allows real-world communities to set up virtual
communities (ex: baseball team)
Members can put partner’s banners on their pages
Hotbot, Accuweather, Rolling Stone, Garden.com
pay per placement, clickthrough, or transaction
List of free web space hosts
http://www.100best-free-web-space.com
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Personalization (a form of customization)
It begins with online profiling
This involves obtaining personal information from
visitors and storing it in a database
The visitor must accept a cookie to link their visits to
this information
They could also be given a password protected page
that is their entryway
A dynamically generated page is presented to them
the next time based on their information
Clickstream data is used to modify the profile
They can also be asked to fill out more information
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
To do this well, you have to know what types of
information to ask for
This means knowing your customer well
How do customers interact with us?
What are their interests in our store?
How do they make buying decisions
You also have to know how much to ask for
Marketers say typical buying decisions are made on
the basis of 6 or less factors
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
I. Advertising models for the web
• What’s different about the web?
• Types of ads
• Come-ons
• New technologies and concepts
II. The digital advertising value chain
• Who’s involved and what do they do?
III. Business processes in digital advertising
• Managing digital advertising
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
The digital advertising value chain
Advertiser
Advertising Agencies
Site Repping Firms
Websites
Consumers
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Electronic Commerce
Advertisers:
Businesses want to market and advertise products and
services on the web
Digital marketing and advertising are two ways a
company can market itself
Why choose this media outlet?
Companies are investing heavily in their on-line
presence as on-line audiences continue to grow
They will work with media buyers
Immediabuy https://www.mediapost.com/
Enginehouse http://www.enginehousemedia.com
The Digital Marketing Company http://www.thedmco.com/
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Advertising agencies create the digital advertising
strategy and presence
Traditional agencies have developed interactive media
groups and compete with interactive agencies
Digital marketing and advertising involves:
Developing, maintaining, and updating corporate
web sites
Coordinating multi-media advertising campaigns to
attract people to sites
Companies are transforming themselves into “web
strategists” and “i-builders”
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Who are some of the majors?
Web strategists
Agency.com http://www.agency.com
Sapient http://www.sapient.com/
Modem Media http://www.modemmedia.com/index.html
System integrators
Cap Gemini Ernst & Young http://www.capgemini.com/
Sbi Group http://www.sbigroup.com/home.asp
Digital change management
Razorfish http://www.sbigroup.com/rzf.html
Accenture http://www.accenture.com/
Integic: http://www.usiva.com/
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Site repping firms
They represent clients who want to sell advertising space
on their websites
They act as the salesforce, selling available advertising
inventory to agencies
A site repping firm allows website creators to generate
advertising revenue while staying focused on creating
content
Examples of site repping firms include
VirtualFocus, Inc http://www.virtualfocus.com/marketing.html
JDA Software Group http://www.jda.com/p_revenuemgmt.asp
MaxWorldWide: http://www.maxworldwide.com/
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Advertising networks
These companies have stables of sites where your ads
van be placed
They compete for “reach”
They also are beginning to target ad placement in their
networks demographically and geographically
Some are also running banner exchanges to lower end
user costs
These are examples:
DoubleClick http://www.doubleclick.com/
Advertising.com http://www.advertising.com/home.html
24/7 Media, Inc http://www.247media.com/
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Websites
The last link in the chain and final stopping point for digital
advertising $$
This is the site where the advertising appears
The web site owners determine how much real estate is
for sale
They also determines the type of advertising they will
accept
They make their wishes known to the site repping firm
which then negotiates for them
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
You’re ready to sell advertising space if you:
Have a sales agreement template ready to go
Know the industry terminology so you can discuss
advertising on your site with some authority
Know why someone would want to advertise on your
site and can verbalize this to a complete stranger
Know who the audience is on your site (demographics
and psychographics)?
If you don't know this information or if you can't explain
it clearly it, you're not ready to sell advertising on your
site
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
How to attract advertisers
Work with a site repping or ad broker firm
If your site has a lot of traffic (1 million page views/month
or more) you can list your site in online directories
Many of the commercial directories charge a fee for
your listing
You may purchase ad space that will reach media buyers
and ad agencies announcing that you are ready for
advertising
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
The target: consumers’ eyeballs
It’s not easy to determine the size of the consumer market
It’s somewhere between 100-120 million adult users (US
and Canada)
Many are professionals with serious tendencies to buy
and disposable income
They spend significant amount of time using the web
for recreational and work-related purposes
It’s somewhere around 7-10 million kids, whose spending
is based around disposable income
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
There is a large consumer market to be tapped, but two
major problems must be resolved
The first is how to carry out marketing functions in a
dynamic environment where the rules are not clear
There are different business imperatives on the web
The second is how best to reach target audiences
This is the problem of advertising on the web
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
I. Advertising models for the web
• What’s different about the web?
• Types of ads
• Come-ons
• New technologies and concepts
II. The digital advertising value chain
• Who’s involved and what do they do?
III. Business processes in digital advertising
• Managing digital advertising
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Key business processes
Media planning
Trafficking ads
Media buying
Reporting
Producing ads
Post-Buy Analysis
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Media planning
Agency works with advertiser to determine key
advertising messages
Which advertising media to utilize, how many ad dollars
to invest in each medium
Output of this stage is a media plan
Media buying
Agency determines which properties (in this case, which
sites) ads will run on and buys (or reserves) the inventory
for its advertising client
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Producing ads
Agency creates the ad or outsources it
Trafficking ads
Once created, the ad needs to be sent to all web sites
included in the media buy
Ad trafficking consists of sending the display-ready ad
Also the traffic instructions for the ad
When the ad is supposed to appear, where it is
supposed to appear, and for how long
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Reporting
Agencies receive confirmation from sites that the ad
ran when/how it was supposed to
Can be done daily or weekly reports
For websites, such reports include
Ad impressions, or the number of times the ad was
shown
Click-throughs (how many times audience members
clicked on an ad and went to the advertiser's site)
Percent yield, equal to the number of clickovers
divided by the number of impressions
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Post-buy analysis
Once an ad has completed its run, the agency runs a
post-buy analysis
The purpose is to determine whether the campaign
has been successful and whether the client should
continue to run ads with the given strategy
This determines which properties in a given medium
are the “best” properties for the ad campaign
This analysis looks at performance of an ad campaign
across multiple media
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Managing digital advertising can involve several activities
Site activity
analysis
User
profiling
Scheduling/serving/
reporting ads
Auditing
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Site activity analysis
Understanding how people use your site can help
generate more traffic because you can:
Learn which pages and resources are most popular,
Identify technical problems and system bottlenecks
Learn where people are coming from and going to when
they visit
Log analysis tools
Webservers automatically log requests for all documents
and images
These files can analyzed to understandht traffic
generated by the website
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Site activity analysis
Real-time analysis tools
These allow analysis of website activity in real-time
These require server software to run on the server
There is no downloading of log files to a desktop machine,
and maintainers can get information about their websites
much faster
Real-time site analysis companies include
Accrue
http://www.accrue.com
Informatica
http://www.informatica.com/
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
User profiling
The potential of digital advertising lies in treating the web
like a direct marketing medium not a broadcast medium
The problem is that users are anonymous
Eliciting demographic information through registration
forms is difficult
Some technologies can “learn” and make inferences
about a user through indirect means
Collaborative filtering: NetPerceptions
http://www.netperceptions.com/index.php
Psychographic profiling: 20Qnet
http://www.20q.net/special.html/
Neural networking: ATG.com
http://www.atg.com/
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
User profiling technologies can be used for other
applications aside from targeting advertisements
They can be used to target specific content for specific
users
This allows the customization of ad delivery
Because ad sales are important to website creators,
profiling technology vendors offer targeted advertising as
an immediate application for their solutions
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Ad Management
Static ads: the ad is “hard-coded” into the page
While requiring little up-front investment, maintenance
and creation of performance reports for the ads is
difficult
Changing ads once they have fulfilled their contracts
is also difficult
Too many ads on a page can slow the download
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Dynamic ads
These require some programming
Perl/cgi/Java scripting Javascript
This is an internal solution to managing placement
and tracking
While easy to create, they can unreliable, often grow in
complexity and consume internal technical resources
Most in-house ad management systems still require
creating reports with log file analysis tools
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Ad networks:
These services allow the serving and tracking of ads to
be performed from a third-party machine
This are an attractive alternative to smaller websites
Linking into an ad network is often as easy as placing
a static ad into the HTML
Ad networks provide the “one-stop shopping,” where
services are bundled with site repping services
They bill as an ongoing percentage of a site’s
advertising revenue
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Problems with using ad networks
They typically can serve out only one MIME type (i.e.,
either JPEG/GIF, Java, or Audio, but not all three)
They create another point of failure which is beyond a
website creator’s control
Targeting ads with a website’s data about a user may
be difficult with ad networks, given latency issues
This refers to the time lag involved in gathering,
analyzing, and delivering, and using the data
Examples of ad networks include DoubleClick and
Commonwealth
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Electronic Commerce
Off-the-shelf ad management systems
Licensing off-the-shelf systems from third party vendors
These can be more reliable and flexible than in-house
systems, and have more features
Up-front costs may be higher than other solutions, so
using them involves a cost benefit analysis
These solutions involve concerns about a vendor’s
ability to remain solvent and provide continuing support
and “best-of-class” solutions
These systems require a high degree integration with
existing web technologies (the webserver and user
registration database)
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Auditing
Some advertisers require that websites have their ad
statistics audited by an independent third part
Auditing typically entails sending the webserver log
file to a service provider who will audit and verify
advertising statistics
A number of web auditors have emerged, including
ABC, BPA, I/Pro, and NetCount
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Personalization allows a level of customization of
advertising that has not been seen before
Search engines can display ad banners relevant to the
search terms you use in a query
Multiple versions of the same banner can be made
available for display to different users
When you return to a site, your user profile can be
accessed and appropriate advertising be displayed
just for you
This can also be done if the server can access its
cookie file
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Information can be gathered by the use of monitoring
software, such as the “cookie”
A cookie is data sent to your browser from a webserver
when you request a page
This piece of data can be no more than 4000 bytes
(characters) long and is never "executed" as code
It can’t contain programs or viruses
It can contain a unique user ID and then, when you
return to the page, you do not have to enter it again
Cookie information:
http://www.cookiecentral.com
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Shopping carts can be created that will allow you to quit
and 6 months later come back and still have the same
products in your cart
Preferences that you select or display as you browse
can be used can be stored to customize the site for you
on your next visit
Netscape let people customize the Netscape search
engine page but they had to accept a cookie to do it
When a server sets a cookie the browser will not give
up these data to any other server
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
A cookie can contain whatever data the creator wants
So, you go to a page that is on a server that uses cookies
The server sends a request for you to accept the
cookie, which is sent before the page loads
If yes, it is accepted by your browser, checked for
length, expiration date, path and domain and then saved
When you return,your browser checks the URL of the
link against its cookie database
If it has a cookie that matches the domain and path of
the link it will send the cookie to the server along with
the request for the page
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
Cookies can be used for a number of things
Online ordering systems
An online ordering system uses cookies that would
remember what a person wants to buy
Site personalization
If a person comes to your site but doesn't want to see
any banners, a cookie can let them to select this as an
option and from then on (until the cookie expires) they
wouldn't see them
Website tracking
Site tracking shows where people go when they access
your site
It can show you “dead ends”
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
It can show places in your site that people go to and then
wander off because they don't have any more interesting
links to hit
It can also give you more accurate counts of how
many people have been to pages on your site
You can differentiate 50 unique people seeing your site
from one person hitting the reload button 50 times
Security concerns
It cannot be used to get data from your hard drive, get
your email address or steal sensitive information about
you
It can be used to track where you travel over a
particular site
School of Library and Information Science
Electronic Commerce
A cookie can also be set by a server if that server is
sending you an image
So you go to a site and there is a banner from Nissan
(the banner being served from somewhere else)
A subsequent visit to another site with an image
being served from the same server will be able to say
that you’ve been to the first site
A cookie can contain your email address
If you go to a site that asks for your email (in a form) it
could then set a cookie at your browser that contains
your email
Your email address would then be sent to this server
every time you visit it
School of Library and Information Science