Prometheus 6

FTC Wants to Know What Big Brother Knows About You
'Behavioral Targeting' on Web Is Debated
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2008; A01

How do you find a bride these days?

One of the nation's leading online tracking companies knows.

Monitoring consumers at roughly 3,000 Web sites, Revenue Science identified brides by picking out bridal behavior it had seen: anyone who'd gone online to read about weddings in the news, entered "bridesmaid dresses" into a search engine or surfed fashion pages for wedding styles.

The company found 40,000 such people, whom it knows by random number, not name, and sent them a tailored online ad.

"A successful campaign," according to company president Jeff Hirsch.