Real-Time Bidding and Our Future

A graph showing an advertiser's benefits of using real-time bidding  

    Have you ever been on Facebook or Twitter and an advertisement pops up that you are actually interested in? Well, you can thank real-time bidding for that. Real-time bidding is a somewhat new advertising technique where online advertisements are bought and sold. For example, an Internet user spends a lot of time browsing the web on financial web sites. When that user uses the internet, a program tracks what types of thing the user searches for and what type of websites he or she visits, which compiles into his or her user profile. When the user visits a site with real-time bidding (RTB), the RTB system matches the user profile with many advertisers and they bid on the ad, with the highest bidder winning. Everyday, thousands and thousands of people are using the Internet everyday, and with this new 

advertising technique, it has benefitted advertisers very much. 

    But, what does this say about society and where we are heading in terms of technology? With real-time bidding now becoming a part of our everyday lives on the Internet, it shows that, as a society, we are moving more and more towards a digital world. How do you think this new advertising technique will affect the United States? Do you think real-time bidding will be beneficial for consumers, or do you think that it will have a negative effect on consumers because there, at times, can be too much information (and not always correct information) about the consumer?