Geotargeting

With the holiday shopping season now in full force, people should be more careful when buying things online then ever. Companies use methods of geotargeting to try to get consumers to buy things online. Geotargeting is the method of determining the location of a website visitor and delivering different content to that visitor based on his or her location, such as country, region/state, city, metro code/zipcode, organization, IP address, ISP or other criteria. They will manipulate the content specific people see based on prior websites they have visited. The website will also leave cookies on a user's computer which will save information about the IP address without ever notifying the user. Not only has this increase a significant amount since marketers began using this method, one article I read said geotargeting will increase by 868% by 2016. Companies such as Twitter and Facebook are also welcoming this with open arms because of the 30 to 40% premium they can charge for geotargeted advertisments as opposed to non-geotargeted advertisements. http://streetfightmag.com/2012/08/17/why-not-all-geotargeting-methods-are-created-equal/#.UK_X0cxe6nA