NetGravity tames the web cookie monster | 19 June |
You might not realize it, but every time you use one of the main line browsers and hit a World Wide Web site, a little message is left behind on your system. The message, called a cookie, resides on your browser to be read by the Web site when you call back. The cookie can tell a lot about the user. Among other things, it can tell where you've been, and how often you've been there. Maybe Big Brother has been the Cookie Monster all this time but we didn't know it. For now though, a company called NetGravity is just using the cookie to manage Web site advertising. The first thing NetGravity does is to provide software to analyze the data available in the cookie. John Danner, president of NetGravity, told Newsbytes that with the software, a company can determine the characteristics of the user. It can tell how often they have been at the site, which buttons they have pushed, and how long they stayed. NetGravity also provides technology to target ads to specific users. Once they have been identified, NetGravity's products allows a Web manager to send ads only to targeted online customers. For an advertiser, NetGravity will enable the advertiser to see which ad is performing best, and eliminate ineffective ads. Advertisers will also have the ability to target ads so that the right ad is seen by the most appropriate visitor to the site, thus increasing the effectiveness of that ad. NetGravity clients include Time Inc.'s Pathfinder, Netscape, Open Market, CyberCash, The Internet Shopping Network (ISN), and c/net. NetGravity just signed up GNN, a service of America Online. GNN will use NetGravity's AdServer technology for its Internet search service, WebCrawler. NetGravity, founded in September, 1995, in San Mateo, California, can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.netgravity.com (Richard Bowers/19960619/Press Contact: Ann Burgraff, NetGravity, 415-655-4797) |
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From the NEWSBYTES news service, 19 June |