Cable Forum - View Single Post - Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Traduk · 06-03-2008, 00:50

Ravenheart,

Thanks for posting. The information on the site you mentioned led to some interesting insights. The patent application appears to give a perspective far beyond what has been discussed on this forum and is potentially, if implemented, far more intrusive than anybody imagined.

Within the long format patent application the methodology appears to search as has been previously found out by search requests, url's visited and website content for keywords to profile for advertising purposes. Customers are allocated an anonymous number and whether they are served adverts is controlled by some proactive act they must take to stop them (opt-out). The nasty bit which will drive people absolutely mad is within a couple of paragraphs way down in the document.

They use the example of a BMW and state that whilst a user is changing from url to url ie. surfing that a car orientated advert can be placed during the transition. That is interfering with the surfing of a customer and injecting an advert between page changes which IMO has an irritation lifetime of seconds. In another paragraph they state that an ISP can benefit by injecting adverts for their own ISP to hopefully avoid churn if a customer has been spied upon looking at other ISP's sites.

I had wondered how either Phorm or an ISP could make much money out of this if they just relied on random surfing marrying up with an OIX.net signed website. It has been discussed and is fairly obvious that they could not super-impose ads on others sites so there was no logical way for making money. However if as the architecture will allow, Thorm becomes the mirror profiler then the injection of an advert to keep us amused whilst we wait for the next page of our choice to load isn't going to hurt anybody and may enhance our experience. Whether there is an actual injection or a re-route before routing via an OIX site advert which will probably have to be clicked on it makes sense because adverts that force fed will be seen by millions per day and without doubt several times and that would be worth a fortune to advertisers but probably thousands and thousands of lost customers to the ISP's.

06-03-2008, 00:50	#582
Traduk Inactive Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 312	Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77 & 102] Ravenheart, Thanks for posting. The information on the site you mentioned led to some interesting insights. The patent application appears to give a perspective far beyond what has been discussed on this forum and is potentially, if implemented, far more intrusive than anybody imagined. Within the long format patent application the methodology appears to search as has been previously found out by search requests, url's visited and website content for keywords to profile for advertising purposes. Customers are allocated an anonymous number and whether they are served adverts is controlled by some proactive act they must take to stop them (opt-out). The nasty bit which will drive people absolutely mad is within a couple of paragraphs way down in the document. They use the example of a BMW and state that whilst a user is changing from url to url ie. surfing that a car orientated advert can be placed during the transition. That is interfering with the surfing of a customer and injecting an advert between page changes which IMO has an irritation lifetime of seconds. In another paragraph they state that an ISP can benefit by injecting adverts for their own ISP to hopefully avoid churn if a customer has been spied upon looking at other ISP's sites. I had wondered how either Phorm or an ISP could make much money out of this if they just relied on random surfing marrying up with an OIX.net signed website. It has been discussed and is fairly obvious that they could not super-impose ads on others sites so there was no logical way for making money. However if as the architecture will allow, Thorm becomes the mirror profiler then the injection of an advert to keep us amused whilst we wait for the next page of our choice to load isn't going to hurt anybody and may enhance our experience. Whether there is an actual injection or a re-route before routing via an OIX site advert which will probably have to be clicked on it makes sense because adverts that force fed will be seen by millions per day and without doubt several times and that would be worth a fortune to advertisers but probably thousands and thousands of lost customers to the ISP's.