some articles about Gator and spyware in general:
Harvard study wrestles with Gator
Gator is a utility, sometimes derided as "spyware," that monitors a user's Web browsing activity and displays relevant advertisements. Until this week, the service promised advertisers that it could slap promotions onto a computer screen when a reader visited a competitor's Web site.
According to the Harvard report, pop-up advertisements for Sun Microsystems' powerful V880 server, boasting "See how Sun beats IBM," are aimed at Gator users who visit IBM.com. In the cutthroat travel business, Orbitz, Travelocity.com, Priceline.com, and Cheap Tickets have purchased pop-ups that Gator users visiting arch rival Expedia will see, the study found. Expedia, in turn, uses Gator to aim its own "bargain fares" ads at all four of its competitors' sites.
news.com.com
This is the harvard study it looks like:
Documentation of Gator Advertisements and Targeting
Background
The Gator Corporation, a California company founded in 1998, calls itself "the leader in online marketing" and reports on its web site that it has more than 30 million users. As Gator explains in its "Quick Tour" (page since replaced by Gator; preserved by archive.org; preserved by author), Gator's software is installed on users' Windows computers. This allows Gator to show advertisements while users are viewing any site on the web, and Gator promises advertisers (page since removed by Gator; preserved by archive.org; preserved by author) that it can even display their ads when users visit competitors' sites. Gator's ad formats include pop-ups, pop-unders, and sliders.
According to Gator, its method of displaying advertisements is more effective than others'. Gator says it offers advertisers a clickthrough rate of more than 10%, purportedly more than 35 times higher than average web sites. Gator attributes this success to "deliver[ing] special offers precisely related to the users' interest at the time they are making purchasing decisions or shopping for relevant goods and services."
cyber.law.harvard.edu |
