The Hidden Power of Doubleclick’s Databases

Here’s an excerpt from a new trade story. We think it’s relevant to the Google merger review, including the issue of data access and privacy. “excerpt: “Well, it turns out that the “raw” numbers we are using aren’t really raw. They look “raw” to us because 99.99% of the agency people do not have access to (or even want to look at) the raw raw. The raw raw is what the insiders would call log files. They are usually sitting with adservers (DoubleClick, Atlas, etc) and in their databases. Yes, you heard me right. There are databases, humongous ones that collect and compile cookie-level information. And there are database experts, lots of them. We do not see them, because they are not agency people. They work for adservers and sit behind the shields of adserver’s account reps. So in the end we are very much like a database marketing operation, except that in our case database and marketing are siloed in two different organizations.”

from: “The Magic Window.” Chen Wang. Online Metrics Insider. Oct. 12, 2007.

Author: jeff

Jeff Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. A former journalist and filmmaker, Jeff's book on U.S. electronic media politics, entitled "Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy" was published by The New Press in January 2007. He is now working on a new book about interactive advertising and the public interest.

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