Now ISPs Want to Serve You Ads, Too

Carriers including Embarq, spun off in 2006 from Sprint Nextel, and BT are exploring ways to mine data they can collect about customers' online habits to deliver tailored ads. At stake is a slice of the $25.9 billion in online advertising projected by eMarketer this year. Already, phone companies use a technology known as deep-packet inspection (DPI) to weed out spam, catch viruses that could possibly harm a network, or determine what practices are hogging bandwidth. It wouldn't be a stretch to also use DPI to figure out which ads to shoot to which users. Robert Dykes, CEO of advertising DPI vendor NebuAd, likens the technology to "an eyedropper, picking up select things" from the communications network. NebuAd's gear attaches to a communications network and collects data on Web site usage—although it ignores e-mails, Web calls, and activity on password-protected sites like those of financial institutions. NebuAd's tool works by keeping tabs on a visited site, then associating that site with an anonymous number—rather than, say, an IP address or a particular subscriber. In turn, the number is labeled with a relevant category of ads—say, travel in cases where a user has visited a travel site.