Slowly but surely, advertisers are learning how to track mobile users

LINK: www.technologyreview.com ➚ | Posted by: Caroline O'Donovan | March 20, 2013

Advertisers have been slow to embrace mobile advertising. According to the MIT Technology Review, “The average cost an advertiser pays to show an ad to a thousand people on a desktop computer is $3.50, but it’s only 75 cents on mobile devices, according to estimates from the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers.”

It’s hard to track a viewer’s behavior on mobile — cookies don’t work as reliably, and users are increasingly toggling back and forth between devices depending on their task. But not for long:

Technology companies are now rushing to fill the infrastructure gap that’s preventing mobile ads from becoming truly valuable. Google has filed patents on ideas for how to link mobile ad campaigns to data about people’s real-world purchases, and one alumnus of Google’s ad business recently raised $6.5 million in funding for her company, Drawbridge, whose technology allows marketers to follow consumers from one device to another (see “Get Ready for Ads That Follow You from One Device to the Next.”).

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