#1 – Yes, all three would subscribe to the bigbrother network. The ad-tag on the actual page references to ad.bigbrother.com and hence your page history is stored in bigbrother’s cookie.

#2 – When myspace puts a bigbrother ad tag on one of their pages your browser will send all the bigbrother.com cookie data that was set on gizmodo, engadget and slashdot to the adserver — and hence bigbrother knows what sites you’ve been to.

-Mike

1) What does this mean? In your example, do all three of gizmodo, engadget and slashdot have to individually subscribe to the bigbrother network? If engadget does not belong to the bigbrother network, can bigbrother in some way know that you’ve been to engadget regardless?

2) How does the myspace cookie know that you’ve been to the three other sites?

Thanks.

The exchange gives behavioral providers a method with which they can flag users in the exchange-wide cookie, and then the behavioral provider can target campaigns to specific user segments. This solves the big chicken & egg problem for new behavioral providers as they no longer have to worry about getting access to inventory and they can simply place bids on exchange-wide impressions for any user on which they have data.

I’m curious. In a marketplace like RMX (I’m new to this, but I’m guessing that a network bids to place an ad on a publisher site), who does all the cookie stuff? Does RMX check out the cookie to see who I am (or, rather, what characteristics I have)? Does the network do that? If the networks do it, how do networks bid without knowing ahead of time what I’m all about (age, that I went to engadget, whatever)? Who serves the ad? The network or RMX? This stuff is pretty interesting.