What Was I Saying About Charter and NebuAd?

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June 26, 2008

What Was I Saying About Charter and NebuAd?

“NebuAd suffered another splash of bad press when the U.K. tech tabloid The Register scoured the professional networking sites LinkedIn and LinkSV and found that five executives at the company used to work at Claria (formerly Gator Corp.), a company that has been widely criticized as a distributor of advertising spyware.

“The controversy around NebuAd may come as a blow to ISPs hoping to cash in on the online advertising market.

“Increasingly, cable companies are looking to harness their users’ data to serve more targeted ads and create a lucrative business line. Several of the nation’s largest cable providers, including Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR), are working together to sell targeted ads across their networks under the aegis of a group called Canoe Ventures.

“A Charter spokeswoman told InternetNews.com that the company still plans to go forward with the NebuAd trial once the privacy issues have been resolved.”

Like I was saying two days ago, when Charter was using much more obfuscatory flack-speak to say about the same thing, we can read “once the privacy issues have been resolved” to mean “once we’re sure J. Random Congressguy won’t come sniffing around again.”

NebuAd isn’t some new kid on the block. Just go searching for the company in the news and you’ll see it has been around for a little while now and has taken in millions in VC. It won’t go away particularly easily, and it operates in the context of an industry that’s already overwhelmingly hostile to your privacy. Look for a few incremental changes in the overall approach that result in the same thing: Yet another entity following you around the ‘net, warehousing your browsing habits, and insisting that you trust its patent-pending technology to keep that information safe.

Claria/Gator ring a bell? Read up.

(Link)