Can advertising support a free Internet?
The supporters of an open, democratic Internet, funded mainly by advertising, are facing some big questions about how their vision will unfold. A freely accessible digital world, websites and social networks are open to all, is the dream of many. But critics wonder if this is desirable or even possible.
Brands (shift) a huge proportion of their marketing budgets into online advertising in recent years. But while many campaigns hit the spot, others be annoying, intrusive and irrelevant.
To discuss the future of online advertising, the Guardian teamed up with advertising technology provider AppNexus to run a roundtable discussion. The discussion was conducted under the Chatham House Rule, where comments were made on condition that they were not attributed to the speakers, (encourage) a free-flowing discussion.
A key point of argument in the discussion was the Internet should be funded. One participant was passionate about the ad-funded model: "It is a wonderful tool for accessing information, for consuming information and for the distribution of brands. "But another thought that the quality of content on the Internet inevitably suffers " you have other resources to fund it. "There are fears that ad revenue is insufficient to pay for all the content that is needed for the web. "Generally speaking, the ad-funded model puts a downward pressure on the quality of content."
The discussion returned to the question: will advertising continue as the main source of funding for the web, (fuel) its growth? Digital advertising faces some serious challenges if it is to keep the web free-one of which is concerns over the ethics of tracking people's online behavior their permission. The success of online ad campaigns is determined by the data that brands can access about Internet users. How old are they? What are their interests? Are they male or female, single or with children? Much of this data will be collected from cookies (download) on to users' computers. Cookie data allows web publishers to track users' online journeys and observe the actions they take on different websites. They can then sift through (筛选) data to identify （appropriate）places to run the ads.
微信扫码预览、分享更方便
