Almost everyone has at least once experienced the situation in which a website asked a question along the following line: “do you allow us to store your information”. People then choose either to accept or decline this request. Personally, I mostly accept, although I am not sure why. However, I do see that my ads follow my browsing history. Therefore, I would like to show you how this collaboration between cookies and ads works.
The Nationale Omroep Stichting (NOS), the ‘Dutch BBC’, has made a graphical illustration of the process, which I will use to clarify the sequence of events. (Note: the numbers below do not correspond with the numbers in the NOS image).
- You give permission to a website to extract the you leave on the website.
- A data package with this information is made.
- This bundle will travel to a so-called advertisement agency, which will sell it on the advertisement market.
- Hundreds of bidders will place a bid on your information. The price is determined by supply and demand. Mostly the bidder with whom you match best, will win the action.
- The winner’s advertisement (yellow line and building) then appears on your screen.
As shown above, your cookie information is sold on an online auction. Of course, there are billions of them and individually they are not significant. Still, I think that it is important to be aware of this phenomenon.
Interestingly, Google also has an opinion on this matter. They suggest that there is a win-win situation because you will see relevant advertisements and the ad will be given to the advertiser who values you the most. I think differently. First, I feel being spied as a search on my phone will result in the corresponding ads on my laptop a few seconds later. I understand the mechanics, but it just feels creepy. Secondly, Google (and other organizations) use you as product without paying for your ‘services’. Compare it with Google entering your house, stealing your chairs and selling them. To make this even more awkward, all the time you were holding the door open for Google.
Although this example is a bit extreme, I wonder what your opinion is on this matter.
References
NOS. (2019). Zo ziet de veiling achter een cookiemelding eruit. [online] Available at: https://nos.nl/op3/artikel/2305556-zo-ziet-de-veiling-achter-een-cookiemelding-eruit.html [Accessed 10 Oct. 2019].
Support.google.com. (2019). About the ad auction – AdSense Help. [online] Available at: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/160525?hl=en [Accessed 10 Oct. 2019
Dear Sven,
Thank you for your contribution and the great read. I think you raise some very valid questions concerning privacy and cookies. I often accept all the cookies, just to get the notification out of the way, just like you do. Before reading this article, I had never realised that the data that was collected by using cookies was sold on an online auction. Of course with the recent changes in ‘cookie laws’, most websites have made some great changes to their cookie policy, but I agree that we should still pay attention to what happens to our data online.
One tip: you could install purify on your phone. This application automatically blocks all the ‘wrong’ cookies!
Very interesting read, and I like the immediate link to DBA. Based on your last response, I think my service would be free access to the content I’m viewing right? That way I let company’s bid on what to show me, and I can browse content that others worked hard for online. My time and attention is indirect financial gain. I think that, unfortunately, ads are essential to keep content producers (especially small ones) going. Without them only larger corporations with other revenue streams could spend considerable amounts of working time posting comments. Do you agree?
Hi Sven, thanks for your post on this topic.
In my opinion a big problem with the practice of storing cookies is that still many people don’t understand what cookies mean, why companies collect them and the implications of it. As you say, it is true that Google uses us as a product without paying for their services. But imagine how Google has changed our lives – would you really want to pay for their services? It is obvious that such services can’t be provided for free. Somehow the company must earn (enough) money. But I do see the problems of cookies. I fully agree that it sometimes feels like spying and I had situations in which it felt quite creepy as well. I also believe that personalized ads enabled through cookies can be quite dangerous. In the past, we have already seen how targeted ads can strongly influence us people and whole countries.
You can still delete cookies manually and there are even tools with which you can manage or autodelete your cookies, see chrome extension “Cookie AutoDelete” for example. There you can whitelist websites for which you want to keep your cookies (e.g. because of logins) and delete all the other cookies automatically as soon as you close the tab. However, while such a tool can be very beneficial, I imagine that only tech-savvy users are able to use such a tool. Therefore, such tools do not really solve the danger of cookies and it remains unclear whether companies will change their cookie-practices in the future.