How to get that advertising bullseye off your back

Mar 17 2008 By Giles Turnbull

Advertising on the web is rather like advertising on telly. We all know it’s part of the deal, and most of the time we just try to ignore it.

Naturally, the advertisers would rather that we didn’t. They’d rather that we not only took notice of the ads, but that we clicked on them more often too. That’s how online advertising makes money.

So to make us click on them more, the industry has been looking at ways to make the ads more interesting.

Spicing them up visually didn’t help much – indeed, the more visually intrusive ads are more annoying than the subtle ones, so might only serve to drive people away faster.

So the advertisers are now trying something different.

That something different is called Phorm, and it matters to you if your ISP is BT, Virgin or TalkTalk.

These three ISPs – among the largest in Britain, serving millions of customers between them – have signed a deal with Phorm (www.phorm.com) that will change the way advertising works on the web. At least, the advertising that their customers see.

Phorm works like this. Web sites that run adverts sign up with Phorm’s offshoot, the Open Internet Exchange (www.oix.net).

From then on, when a user visits their site via one of Phorm’s member ISPs, that user will see adverts that have been specially picked to suit that user’s interests and search history.

BT and Virgin customers will get the Phorm service by default, and have the chance to opt out from it if they wish.

TalkTalk customers, on the other hand, will be given the chance to opt in.

How does Phorm know what you’re interested in? Because since your ISP signed up, it has been watching and recording your web activity.

A cookie – a tiny text file – is stored on your computer and all the oix.net advertiser sites can find it there; they match the cookie with anonymised data that your ISP has collected about what sort of stuff you tend to look at online.

The result is that if you usually look at a lot of sites about cars and motoring, you’ll suddenly start seeing a lot of ads about cars and motoring.

What’s upsetting some people is that if you are a customer of one of these ISPs, you will have to opt out of the service if you do not wish to be part of it. Many critics have pointed out that it would be fairer on the users to get them to opt in from the start.

But those critics are probably not the kind of people that Phorm wants to have as users anyway.

On the whole, people leave their computers as they are and don’t mess with default settings. People are naturally disinclined to opt out of anything that comes with any sort of geek service; Phorm will be expecting a few strident dissenters to quit, but the majority won’t.

So in theory, everyone’s happy. Phorm gets to sell ads to advertisers. ISPs get a cut of the income from clicks on ads.

But if you’re one of those niggled critics, there’s an easy way out. Phorm’s technology is being marketed under the name Webwise, and if you go to www.webwise.com  and click the "Switch off" button, the cookie on your computer will be reset and your data will no longer pass through Phorm’s servers.

Giles Turnbull is at www.gilest.org