The PC World article, Yahoo Tailors Graphical Ads to Users’ Search Queries, discusses changes to Yahoo’s “Impulse” advertising program.
Yahoo captures a user’s query terms and categorizes them. For example, a user who searches for the term “credit card” will be tagged as someone who is interested in the broader “financial services” category, said Usama Fayyad, senior vice president and chief data officer at Yahoo. Then that user will be served graphical ads, such as banner ads, from participating advertisers in that financial services category while he is in the network of Yahoo sites, Fayyad said.
Privacy Concerns?
Yahoo’s privacy policy states that the company “automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Yahoo cookie information, and the page you request. Yahoo uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients.”