What is Audience Targeting?
Targeting your audience is when you use habits, specific interests, and demographic information to attract users to your website or app. Demographic information are things like age, gender, and location of where the user is viewing your website from. Habits are trends that keep reoccurring from user to user. This information can help understand what links and pages your users are viewing the most, and can also help understand what areas of your website need to be easier to navigate. Specific interests are common things that all your users view on your website and help understand what users your should try and target when advertising. Recent user purchases can help determine these specific interests, and all three of these areas can found found by sites using computer cookies. I think that websites should be allowed to use computer cookies, but I can also see how users may think that it is an invasion of their privacy. Basic information should be allowed for websites to use (age, gender, location).
What are Cookies?
Users agree to using cookies when they enter a website. Most of the time it is a popup that users agree too without even realizing what they are accepting. In fact, “the purpose of the computer cookie is to help the website keep track of your visits and activity” (NortonOnline). Cookies allow websites to gain data on how to target their audiences. By users allowing websites to use their cookies, they are giving their demographics, which can be location, age, gender, and specific interests. This information is then used by the website owner to fully understand what kind of users visit their website. So, many users choose to share their cookies, but others can see it as being an invasion of their privacy. Some users even will turn off their cookies while using the internet.
Citations
“About Audience Targeting.” Google Ads Help, Google, support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2497941.
NortonOnline. “What Are Cookies?” What Are Computer Cookies?, us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-what-are-cookies.html.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2497941
https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-what-are-cookies.html