The Internet is Not Really Free

Lot of resources on the internet seems free. We are using it free of charge. There should be a way to the content providers to earn money. This is where the digital footprint information is used for the business purposes. Though the online services seems free, those are not actually free of charge.

Tracking the user information, customizing the content and using the analyzed data becoming a growing business in internet. There are specialized people in this area, they observe and collect the data and link with other sources. Mainly marketers and advertiser use this technique to promote their product.

There is no direct cost involve on the internet to watch a video, read a blog, view a web site, etc. Though the users are not paying directly, they are paying indirectly. As described above the content providers need money to maintain their services, to their servers, their database storages and network facilities. The content providers earn money indirectly to run their services.

The question is how the content providers can earn money indirectly from the users. The service is funded by monetizing information about the internet user, about his preferences, his interests and his social circle, basically the information collected in the form of digital footprint. If the user pay a subscription or not, these information will be collected and used for various purposes.

The users may notice that when they visiting a web page there are so many advertisement all over the pages. Most of the advertisements are matching with the users’ preferences. How the content provider predict the correct advertisement is from the collected digital footprint information. For example a user searching for a shirt in an online store and he is interested on it. This data will be stored, next time the user log in to a web page he will notice the shirt advertisements are popping up at the page.

To select the right advertisement on the page, the marketers and the advertisers may choose based on the demography, language, right product, the correct time and other factors; that will help to target the consumers effectively.

Some intermediate parties playing a role between the user and the advertisement companies. The intermediate parties collect user information such as user profile, preferences, language and single sign-on data, and they analyze and process the information and provide to advertisement companies. There may be no direct connection between the user and the advertisement parties, the connection resides through intermediate parties.