Google is starting a web tracking

Google is paying users to…? Track 100% what they do online

Google is working to collect information about Internet users. The company has set up a new program called Screenwise, which offers money to users who install a black box on their home network to "measure Internet use".

Something still not live in Australia and Perth, but in US it is already realty. We are fascinated from this new opportunity in an advertising direction. While Google AdWords may not directly be affected from these data collections, other advertising opportunities such as Display Advertising, Email marketing and other targeting opportunities will strongly benefit from these implementations.

For their participation, Google offers the extension users a $5 Amazon gift card for signing up and another $5 gift card for every three months they stay with the program.

Google has offered the box to members of Knowledge Networks, a company that pays users small amounts to participate in surveys and data collection by other companies.

Google is offering $100 just for users to sign up, and an additional $20 for every month the device is installed for up to a year's time. The data-collecting box has a supposed value of $150, and Google was accepting the first 2,500 Knowledge Networks members who signed up for the program.

Google will share the aggregated data with third parties, including "academic institutions, advertisers, publishers, and programming networks." The agreement notes that the data collected will be personally identifiable, with some exceptions: https addresses and private browsing windows of people using the router will not be tracked. The browser extension, however, will track private or incognito browsing, though the data will not be personally identifiable. For all other collected data, Google will "attempt" to remove that identifiable info before sharing it—no guarantees, though.

The new privacy policy affords Google a look well beyond what people are Google-searching for. Everything done on Android phones, Chrome browsers (outside Incognito windows), YouTube, docs, calendars, and Blogger blogs are now prime to be culled and integrated into a single profile, held internally at Google.

We can only speculate about the possible lucrative uses for this data. The business prospects of all that raw information are huge.

It's easy to forget that Google is one of the biggest advertising companies in the world. Actually, we don't! We are thrilled from the chance they can get from these collections.

While this becomes real in Perth, are you interested in running any advertising activity? Call us today to discuss them.