How much does TubeNet know about my activities?

[hup_d_dup]

I think you've answered your own question.

Well, I had a couple of questions. But I don't know the answer to this one:

How can TubeNet monetize that display ad?

I assume TubeNet wants money for displaying that ad. How do they get payment from a company with which they apparently have had no previous contact?

[cmmalone]

I assume TubeNet wants money for displaying that ad. How do they get payment from a company with which they apparently have had no previous contact?

Sean doesn't get money from the flower shop. Sean gets money from Google Adsense or some other (or multiple other) middle man. That middle man service is who is tracking you through cookies and who is deciding which ads are best to show you in order to maximize the return to their advertisers. Their advertisers choose to spend their money with Google Adsense because Google is good at tracking you and showing you ads that are more likely interesting to you. Part of that is showing Tuba-related ads on a tuba site. But part of that is also tracking what other sites you see ads on to know what you like and giving you ads about that.

The whole mess right now is coming about because cookies are only supposed to be allowed for the site you're visiting. But you're not visiting the ad site. You're visiting Tubenet who is shoving content from the ad site into its page. Some browsers have protections against the ad site writing cookies when you visit a site that embeds their content. Google (and probably other advertisers) do their best to work around this to track you so they can target their ads better. Information is money.

If this freaks you out, turn cookies off. Though cookies are being replaced by a different local storage mechanism so that may not fully protect you.

I can't believe this is my first post to Tubenet...

- Chad

[hup_d_dup]

Chad, thank you!

It finally makes sense.

Hup.

[Dan Schultz]

I assume TubeNet wants money for displaying that ad. How do they get payment from a company with which they apparently have had no previous contact?

Sean doesn't get money from the flower shop. Sean gets money from Google Adsense or some other (or multiple other) middle man...
- Chad

It may not even be a matter of money transfer. When you put up a forum, someone has to pay for bandwidth, administration, etc. Take a look at the Yahoo Forums. They are free but are financed by ads.

We are paying for the entire Internet by virtue of the advertising that's shoved into our faces. I think I would rather have it this way than to pay for all the services that I'm currently using for free.

[Rick Denney]

Chad, thank you!

It finally makes sense.

Hup.

And to further explain, the ads along the right are Google ads, placed their by Google at the time you load the page, not by this site's owner or his software. The ads at the top of the page are Tubenet sponsors.

Rick "who uses Firefox with ad-block" Denney

[Tom Coffey]

I only understand the general outlines of this discussion, not having grown up with computers. Why is it a good idea to store no documents, pictures and no music on an internet-connected computer? Even if cookies show where we surf, that doesn't allow anyone to get at the contents of the computer, does it?
I think anyone like me, typing a message to Tubenet on the office computer, does this everyday.

[Dan Schultz]

.... Bloke "A computer is much more than a TV and a typewriter."

When mine's closed, it works as a snack tray, too!