News Sites Lag Facebook, Google in Ad Targeting | ClickZ - 0 views
-
Simeon Spearman on 16 Feb 12Only three news sites - CNN, Yahoo News and The New York Times - out of 22 appeared to use high levels of ad targeting, according to a Pew Research Center study. In these cases, 45 percent or more of the ads were different from one user to the next. Another three news sites - CBS, USA Today, and MSNBC - exhibited moderate levels of targeting where between 29 percent and 40 percent of the ads were different across users. Sites with low levels or no apparent targeting included FoxNews.com, WashingtonPost.com, Time.com, and Newsweek.com. When researchers revisited the sites in January, they found that two - latimes.com and theatlantic.com - showed slightly higher levels of ad targeting. "By contrast, highly targeted advertising is already a key component of the business model of operations such as Google and Facebook," the study found.