Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet by Matthew Crain.
Matthew holds a PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is an assistant professor of media and communication at Miami University of Ohio and previously taught at Queens College, City University of New York.
The contemporary internet’s de facto business model is one of Surveillance has been the new black. While browser cookies follow us around the web, Web beacons can track and harvest every Google search, every webpage visited, In fact, on a growing number of global websites, beacons know where you click. Yes indeed they know everything about you and are monetizing all of your online activities every day.
In Profit over Privacy, Matthew is delivering a solid historical beginning to the billion dollar surveillance advertising business.
In fact, Facebook posted revenues over $319 billion in 2021 alone. Surprised learning this is below their 2020 revenue? The loss of our privacy is via Facebook, Google, and Amazon. They certainly resell our online activity to data brokers.
Matthew is tracing this surveillance advertising back to the Clinton administration. This includes the launch of the country’s Nation Information Infrastructure and how the long established Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) designed a safe approach which did acknowledge the coming online profiling of citizens. The FTC also looked to consumer empowerment. But in America, politics ran amok.
Enter Doubleclick
There is clear evidence that the marketing firms were profiting from all user data they collected. Matthew reveals the story of DoubleClick, a banner ad company formed in 1995. During the dot-com boom the company had an IPO that jumped 75% on the first day of trading.
Yet, while gathering user data from their ad network, DoubleClick quietly modified its privacy policy, removing its pledge to keep consumer profiles anonymous. This is part of Matthew’s “surveillance advertising” that confirms companies are able to identify users. Doubleclick was a Google acquisitor in 2007.
Matthew’s work is very worthy of your attention. He compliments the breakthrough book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff and also Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine.
In conclusion, Profit over Privacy is providing valuable insights. Understanding how online your activities are generating profit yet leaving your personal data vulnerable. Hard truth lessons.