todd m. sweet

Trade-Offs Arise as More Sites Link to Facebook - WSJ.com

If online publishers lose data about user behavior, it could deprive them of revenue from selling advertising that is targeted to particular users, said Tim Schigel, chief executive of ShareThis. Advertisers are increasing their spending on such targeted ads faster than that for traditional ads that appear across an entire website at a given time, no matter who is visiting. Knowing which customers share website information is valuable because it lets publishers see which users are influential, meaning they drive a lot of traffic back to their sites. “To the extent that any third party comes in and knows more and can extract more value than the publishers themselves, they can be worried,” Mr. Schigel said.