Ads with tracking cookies yield four percent more than regular ads

Ads based on tracking cookies make about four percent more money than ads that are context-related. Scientists examined the relationship between personalized online advertising and its revenue, but found only minor differences.

The research comes from scientists at the University of California, Irvine, Minnesota, and Carnegie Mellon University. The scientists studied the earnings of millions of advertising transactions from a major US media company with “many newspapers and magazines and associated websites.” The study looked at what those advertisements ultimately yield the publisher. More than ninety percent of all advertisements on the company’s sites were placed via an ‘open auction’.

The researchers also looked at the different users who visited the websites, and whether they automatically refused cookies in their browsers. They also examined the differences between visitors coming from a desktop or mobile, and other variables such as their location. By including those kinds of variables, the scientists came up with a calculation in which the average revenue of an advertisement can be calculated. For users who are placed with a tracking cookie, those revenues are only four percent higher than for users who are placed an ad based on the content of an article. That would work out to about 0.00008 cents per ad.

The researchers say their findings contribute to the public debate surrounding tracking cookies. “All the problems surrounding the ad economy, such as privacy violations and surveillance, have always been excused for their alleged great value to publishers,” researcher Ashkan Soltani told the Wall Street Journal. This debate is also relevant in Europe, especially with regard to the consent that users must give for the placement of tracking cookies.