I was extremely surprised (in a good way) with how my last forum thread turned out. I planned on Web 3.0 being a series of forum threads (now articles). In case you missed the last article, I discussed how Web 3.0 relies heavily on community/social oriented activity. In particular, I'm discussing the possibilities of Web 3.0 impacting how advertisers will advertise more appropriate content to the end-user. Today, I'm going to reach out to one of our DaniWeb users, Vikula, and answer a question they wrote in response to my previous article while including other ideas.
Vikula wrote:
“So my main question here is: how would you implement this fantastic idea?”
Well what really drives Web 3.0 is the information that's available about you. Most of the information about you was most likely contributed by you. Facebook, for example, has tons of information about you in their databases. They know what party you said you were going to. They know what products you like. What videos you like. Anything you've hit like on. Any words or phrases that you put on your status. Making comments about your friend's picture. The list goes on and on about what you do on this one site alone. Don't forget that you might have a Gmail account and you're browsing the web logged in. Don't you think Google wants to know what's up?
Essentially, these mega-websites, as I'd call them (because their traffic and usage is beyond most of our comprehension), gather tons of information about you. In doing so, they're creating ways to advertise better using software. Software is the most powerful tool in the universe as many of you know. So we have Facebook and Google software engineers write the most ridiculous algorithms to figure you out. Granted they have tons of money behind their ideas and for good reason too. There are databases about you and your usage of particular things.
What about the small time webmaster who only attains about a million hits a month? How could they gather the information? Not nearly as many people use their site, so the data available is quite miniscule. I, however, see this changing very soon. Your information is for sale if it's not already! People get spam mail not just because someone used a program to put in every possible name, but rather because you, the public, so willingly sign up for newsletters. If you ever read the fine print, in a lot of cases, your e-mail could be for sale to third-parties. Well, you knew that already. In any case, you're still willing to supply your information to different websites and registering for things.
If this webmaster had a community base on their website contributing information, it may be valuable to write or acquire proprietary software that will figure out interests of the user. The information is on your site, it's there, it's available. If you have a baseball website, and you have a forum about people who talk about baseball, then you might have someone who likes Louisville Slugger bats. You might want to only advertise Louisville Slugger bats as opposed to another brand to that user to be more effective.
Now of course, to be able to be selective about your advertisers is a different task altogether. Many webmasters use Google AdSense which decides which Ads they want to advertise on your site with. However, if your website is popular enough, you might enjoy the liberty of prospecting advertisers to use your site as a publishing medium. It is only then when you could truly use the power of making these ads more specific to the user. This of course is an implementation now process. To implement later will be a whole other discussion.
