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Hi All,

How does a third-party ad provider decide what ad to deliver to a web-page when it's loaded in a browser? And in what format is this data delivered?

Let's say my web-page contains no ad-relevant or differentiating content, but I do know lots about my user: demographic profile, interests, browsing history etc. So the ad I want loaded must be user- (profile-) dependent, and not page specific.

Is it possible, in an ad request from a browser to a third-party provider, to include profile data in the request in order to get an appropriate ad? If so in what format would this request likely be made, and how would the response be formatted? E.g XML, JSON etc.

Many thanks for advice,

Richard.

+1  A: 

Is it possible, in an ad request from a browser to a third-party provider, to include profile data in the request in order to get an appropriate ad?

In general you have to inform your users (by law) that you give away their information to 3rd parties, (it's called 'privacy' ;)). Though in general, it's not done at an individual request basis. Websites sell ad-space to ad agencies who sell this space to advertisers. As websites have a given set of aspects, the advertisers buy X pageviews with sites which have aspect A, B and C for example. Ad agency then controls this: the website calls (usually in an iframe) the ad agency's ad server to provide an ad for aspect A, B and C and the ad server simply serves up an ad.

As it's an IFrame, the ad-agency can track the user through cookies, its OWN cookies. This is more valuable as they can track a user across multiple websites they server the ads for (so they can see which sites user X visits and for how long/which paths this user follows over the pages and combine that with the info the website passed to the ad-agency's ad servers in the iframe request.

The more YOU are giving out to 3rd parties (and you've to provide that info to your users) the more users will either block everything on your site which comes from 3rd parties or simply go away. Respect the privacy of your users. It will give you more in return than some big-brother deal with an ad-agency.

Frans Bouma
Hi, thanks for the feedback. Yes I absolutely appreciate the privacy issue. We would be sending very broad data, no more so than the actual site categorisations used by agencies to decide what ads to deliver. I am just interested as to whether it can be done on an individual request basis. Cheers.
A: 

Hello,

Depending on the Ad Server you are using.. you would set various Targetting Profiles. Then when you are selling your inventory, you would let advertisers pick which targetting profile they want to buy.

The adserver would generate code for these Placements / Zones. You would program your site to call the right zone depending on the user.

majestiq