Mainstream browsers are making a simple and seemingly minor change, but it could be a disaster for companies that provide precision advertising.
Microsoft, which has announced its support for do not track (DNT) in IE9, has taken a bolder step: in the face of fierce opposition from the US advertising industry, the company announced that ie10 in Windows 8 will turn on the "no tracking" function by default.
The 'no tracking' function is one of the latest drafts proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium W3C to solve the problem of network privacy. According to the draft, users can use the browser that supports the function to send digital signals to tell enterprises to stop collecting information about their online activities, so as to protect their privacy.
At present, Internet advertising technology companies will collect users' online behavior data by means of cross site tracking and cookies tracking, and achieve accurate advertising delivery by analyzing users' online habits, so as to obtain the maximum commercial benefits. Google, Yahoo and many other companies benefit from this model.
However, with the popularization of the 'no tracking' function, the existing ecological balance may be broken. If there is no tracking function, advertisers will not be able to understand where users are and what they are interested in. At the same time, the advertising value will be greatly reduced.
Dnt begins to popularize
Dnt was not proposed and implemented as a method recently. As early as 2007, some consumer groups proposed to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to create a 'don't track' list for online advertising.
In December 2010, FTC issued a privacy report in which it required to design a DNT system to allow users to control their privacy information on the network. Subsequently, Microsoft announced that IE9 will provide a blacklist to prevent third-party tracking to protect users' privacy from being tracked.
In 2011, fox announced to provide a solution for DNT through browser header information. Then, ie, apple Safari and opera browsers successively added support for DNT. Recently, Google, which has a wide advertising network, also announced the launch of chrome 23, which supports DNT.
It should be pointed out that, unlike Microsoft's default DNT function, other manufacturers' browsers provide this function, but it is not enabled by default. This situation will not have a great impact on the existing precision advertising companies, because it basically does not prevent them from collecting the data of most users, so as to continue to launch precision advertising.
Dnt is a gentleman's agreement
From a technical point of view, when users use a browser with DNT function to browse a website, the browser will add a signal in the web data transmission to inform the website server that the user does not want to be tracked. If the website complies with the DNT mechanism, it will not collect the user's personal information.
This actually puts forward higher 'moral' requirements for websites. In the real running state system, the browser actually only sends a "no tracking" request. Whether to stop tracking really depends on the manufacturer itself.
Qi Guosheng, CEO of GuoShuang technology, who has a lot of research on DNT mechanism, told Sina technology that 'DNT is not a technology, but more a & lsquo; gentleman Agreement & quo;. 'GuoShuang technology is a leading online business optimization product and service provider.
He pointed out that DNT has not yet become a standard that both browsers and network service providers need to comply with. Although users do not want to be tracked, manufacturers actually have their own choice when processing such requests. 'we can abide by it or not. '
Hit the precision advertising industry
However, as more Internet users pay attention to privacy protection, DNT will likely become a mandatory standard in the future. In order to win the favor of more users, browsers may be willing to add this function. Mainstream browsers such as fox, apple and opera have begun to support DNT, which indicates that this will be a development trend to some extent.
An executive who once worked for a precision advertising company told Sina technology that although the trend is irresistible, due to the large interest chain involved in DNT, the future standard promotion speed will be very slow.
The resistance comes from the advertising industry.
It is reported that Microsoft default ie 10 default open DNT function, the U.S. advertising industry reaction is more intense. The association of American advertisers, which is composed of Dell, IBM, Intel, visa, Verizon, Wal Mart and other big enterprises, even sent an open letter to Microsoft CEO Ballmer, saying that Microsoft will take 'do not track' as the default option of ie10, which will have a serious impact on them.
If consumers choose to keep this setting, they may not be able to collect data from 43% of us browsers, the advertisers warned in an open letter. 'microsoft's behavior is wrong. The whole ecosystem is against it. 'however, Microsoft ignored the advertisers' dissatisfaction.
The reason why the online advertising industry dislikes DNT so much is that it destroys the 'precision' on which they depend for survival, and eventually kills them.
"If everyone abides by it, it will have a great impact on the Internet advertising industry, especially the advertising network providers. "If DNT was widely followed and all users turned on by default, these ad networks would not exist," Qi said. '
"Today, DNT is still a protocol, and it may become a technology in the future. This technology will make it more difficult for all third-party trackers to do hellip & hellip; 'Qi Guosheng said frankly that knowing who they are and what they are doing is a higher requirement for the whole data industry and advertising alliance industry by DNT.