Cookies and Mobile Phone

The mobile phone ad manufacturing could get a increase from a narrative way of collecting information on users.

*UPDATE

Soon your cell phone might share a lot of information about you with advertisers. And although that might make you nervous, some advertisers hope it will also unleash a flood of more targeted, and thus more useful, ads.
This week, Ringleader Digital, a New York-based cell phone ad network is launching an experimental version of what it calls a "media stamp"--a technology it hopes will become as extensive as "cookies" on the Web.
Cookies are one of the behind-the-scenes keys to unlocking the value of digital advertising. Though they are little more than small software files that Web page servers attach to users' computers to identify them, they are nearly ubiquitous and enable advertisers to track users wherever they travel on the Web.
Wireless carriers characteristically prevent outside firms from embedding such information in mobile devices. "The carriers strip off third-party cookies," says Bob Walczak, chief executive of Ringleader Digital. To get around the carriers, Ringleader Digital embeds its digital stamp in servers rather than browsers.
Here's how it works: The stamp or cookie is placed on individual publisher sites--such as ESPN--and captures user data by tracking up to 100 "discriminators," such as a user's time zone, mobile browser and mobile Web bookmarks.
Following weighing these issues, the stamp assigns each user a unique digital descriptor. Because the technology lives on site servers, it will work on nearly all Web-enabled phones, regardless of carrier. Nothing is downloaded to the phone and the stamp is designed to last for the life of the device. "There is no way to lose the cookie," says Walczak. "yet if you hard reset your phone, the stamp can persistently identify it."
Such stamps are likely to appeal to agencies and publishers who want more detail about who is viewing their ads. "The ability to serve extremely targeted ads is an absolute necessity on a mobile platform," says Daniel Taylor, a Yankee Group senior digital media analyst. "Anything that automates the procedure of targeting ads to cell phone users is money in the bank."

Author:

Burgis Sethna