Sean Patrick Cooper

In the commercial sphere, marketers are also looking beyond facts and bits of information, in order to determine not just what you have bought, but what kinds of pitches appealed to you when you did. Once they have compiled your “persuasion profile,” they will refine those targeted ads even further. And if marketing companies can do this, why not political candidates, the government, or companies that want to sway public opinion?

That’s from Sue Halpern’s interesting piece on the state and future of the internet and online marketing, in the NYRB. One thought I had while reading this was that if a moderate internet user is anything like me, then that user is pretty much oblivious to website advertisements. Pop ups, banner ads, side bar ads—ads within the text, hyperlink ads, even the Gmail/Google result ads—I have blinders up that either allow me to ignore them completely or zero in on the little x-box that makes the really annoying ones go away. And even when I’m X’ing boxes, I’m not reading the ad, I’m just realizing for that split second that something is blocking me from seeing the text or video I wanted to see. If I’m registering anything about the ad, it’s the fact that this particular website has now reached that unfortunate status of Annoying Advertisement Enabler.