When it comes to changing website content based on visitor location, serving targeted ads and content…in theory, could this not be applied to single individuals online?
For instance, you normally use CNN. Say you wanted to serve a completely different reality to a handful of individuals without them recognizing the stories they’re seeing don’t completely match to the actual stories most people see…based on their exact location on the grid, down to the individual user level?
I’m not suggesting this has any practical or real-world benefits, it’s more just a general inquiry.
Well, by individual user—and keep in mind, this is straight up hypothetical—it’s not something I would ever do. But by individual I mean you or me, just anybody, a single person. Let’s say there’s no identification and/or legal red tape whatsoever. Just a question.
Yep, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezie. We do it all the time as an offer that’s in Cali probably isn’t available in lets say Philadelphia so we only show offers related to that segment. Also we target PARTS of our site to certain segments as well. Geo-location will get you where you need to go with this, but a server side check against the IP via a service if needed is probably better.
Well, this is why I said it depends on how you define ‘individual user’. There are 5 people in my household that all use devices on the internet - IP is insufficient to distinguish between myself and another member of my household.
I was thinking about different content being displayed once the individual arrives in a new location.
Upon reflection isn’t different content already being targeted to individuals based on their search history? Many sites sell user’s search history and this accounts for the increase in VPN which allegedly do not profit from the user’s data.
Okay, so it’s easy-breezy (or what have you), but Philadelphia is not an individual. What if you want literally want one person—your cousin (practical joke)—to type: www.thissite.com, and somebody else down the street sees what everyone else sees on www.thissite.com.
Well… it sounds evil, or at least like a really bad plot device. But, you might want to look into device fingerprinting.
But that only works if your cousin never goes to a web browser at the library, accesses the web on a phone, looks at a computer at school, looks at his mom’s computer, etc. I don’t see how one specific person could be guaranteed to always be shown a different version of the site.
