NEW YORK - Based on the weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo Inc. has a good idea where you live. Based on searches you've done, the Web portal might also know where you want to go.
...Elsewhere, online hangout Facebook is mining friends' buying habits, and major Internet portals have bought companies to expand their reach and capabilities for "behavioral targeting" — all so advertisers can try to hit you with what they believe you're most likely to buy, even as doing so means amassing more data on you.
..."When you are online today, you've been labeled and tagged as this type of consumer in milliseconds," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "All of a sudden you are exposed to a vast number of invisible salespeople who are peering over your personal details to figure out the best way to sell to you."
...Although behavioral targeting isn't right for all advertisers, it has become increasingly important as companies try to break through the clutter. The research company eMarketer projects that spending on behavioral targeting will nearly double to $1 billion next year and hit $3.8 billion by 2011.
... "We could track them and target ads for sensitive health conditions and get lots of money from pharmaceutical companies for that, but there are certain things we've chosen not to do," Dave Morgan, a senior AOL advertising executive who founded Tacoda, a behavioral-targeting company AOL bought in September.
"Sensitive" includes all targeting to HIV and cancer. Beyond that, health ads are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, Morgan said.
...Many Facebook users, initially unaware that tracking was occurring, have complained that the site went too far in generating endorsements based on friends' online activities. On Thursday, Facebook agreed to offer better notification and controls, and the company is counting on users to feel more comfortable about the tracking over time.
Users' comfort with data profiling has indeed shifted over the years.
...Google faced criticism when it introduced an e-mail service that paired ads with the words inside private messages. Millions of people now use Gmail with scarcely a blink. Users will eventually embrace the latest tactics, too — and by then, they'll complain about even deeper levels of intimacy yet to be invented, said Tracy Ryan, professor of advertising research at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"You want to have enough targeting that a consumer notices the message and pays attention, but you don't want it to be so obvious that they are thinking (there) is targeting," she said. "That would be scary."
