OWN YOUR BILLBOARD

What would you do if a truck pulled into your yard, a crew erected a billboard in front of your living room window, and ads were beamed at you at all hours?  Or what if you hired a plumber to fix a pipe and, while he was in your house, he took an inventory of your belongings and sold it to ad companies resulting in yet more nuisance calls to sell you stuff.  I bet you would tell them to get lost and never do business with them again. 

So why do you allow this to happen on your computing devices?  Your device screen is a billboard, controlled by others, to sell you stuff that they predict you will buy as derived from spying on your Internet clicks through their insertion of cookies into your operating system.  I guess you didn't “get the memo” that in exchange for free Internet content and apps you agreed to a constant barrage of ads and legions of spies infiltrating your computer.  What’s next, GPS tracking of our car journeys, cookies on our smart TVs, face recognition in stores?  Well, er, yes!  There appears to be no end in sight to advertisers’ intent and ability to get more information about you to sell you more stuff.  

There needs to be an advertising industry smackdown.  Clearly the industry will not restrain itself and government will not act. It's up to us to shut them down.   And we have the tools to do so.

According to Forbes magazine, online ad spending will exceed $135 billion in 2015.  This is in addition to the $150 billion spent on conventional ads.  It is clear that digital commerce companies like Google, Facebook, and even newspapers like the New York Times are really not in the business of search, social exchange or news.  They are advertising companies.  Google’s ad revenues in 2014 were $60 billion, accounting for 89% of company revenues.  Search, email, and maps and all the rest are just means to the end of extracting personal information from you to fine tune ad promotions to increase the clicking and purchase conversion rate.  Facebook is designed specifically for people to “share” their intimate details with friends…and with advertisers.  The New York Times allowed 26 trackers, such as Doubeclick, Optimizely, and google analytics, into my computer when I clicked on a news article.  How much money did they make by selling me off?  Maybe I forgot to read the fine print in the terms and conditions that they can auction me off at will.

Pervasive ads are distracting, suck up your computer’s cpu and batteries, and condone breaking and entering and theft of personal information.  Why can’t digital companies make money the old-fashioned way?   You know, by creating valuable products and services that people will pay for directly. 

Here’s what to do.  Get an ad blocker, such as AdBlock, to kill the ads. Your screen will be so much cleaner…and you will own your billboard!  Get a tracker buster such as Ghosterly to stop the cookies from infiltrating your computer when you click on content.  And get a browser tracking buster, such as Disconnect, to stop browsers from gathering data on your searches.   Check it out…these apps work well.  It is one big step you can take to preserve your privacy within this overbearing surveillance society we live in.  And, if enough of us to so, it will send a resounding message to advertisers to actually listen to customers and change the way they do digital business.