How Your Attention Is Auctioned Off to Advertisers

Imagine for a moment that, like most websites on the internet, The Markup had ads on our site. (We don’t.)

Which company gets to show you its ad?

When you loaded this page, you triggered a lightning speed auction for your attention.

As this page loaded, it sent a signal saying there was an ad slot available, along with whatever information it knew about you.

An ad platform got the signal and started an auction for advertisers.

Auctioneer at lectern presents user data in the form of hologram to audience of advertisers.

The advertisers analyzed your data to see if you were someone they wanted to reach.

Close-up of user hologram with floating icons and text around the head (“divorced,” “depression,” “Taylor Swift”).

Based on your information, one bidder matches you to a category called “Health & Fitness::Depression.” These categories group consumers together and are called audience segments.

Close-up of advertiser looking at a tablet that shows check mark.

This bidder, an ad agency working on behalf of a company, was interested in targeting you and placed the winning bid.

Advertiser with badge showing a teal and purple pill holds up paddle, placing the winning bid.

That winning bid decided which ad finally loaded on your page.

And yes, this all took place in an instant, mere milliseconds.

We found one ad platform had 650,000 different ways to label you based on sensitive information like visiting places of worship or an interest in addiction.

Read our investigation into Microsoft’s Xandr ad platform and browse through the lists of audience segments.

How Your Attention Is Auctioned Off to Advertisers

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under the conditions of an Attribution–NonCommercial–No Derivatives Creative Commons license. Please adhere to the following:

Notify us: Please email us at republish@themarkup.org to let us know if you’ve republished the story.
Give prominent credit to The Markup and its journalists: Credit our authors at the top of the article and any other byline areas of your publication.
Do not edit the article: The complete, unaltered article text must be published. If you wish to translate the article, please contact us for approval.
Access to the article must remain free: Do not sell access to this article or place it behind a paywall, but you can republish our articles on sites with ads.
Images may not be available for republication: Not all of the imagery used in articles published on our site are licensed under Creative Commons. Some images are from commercial providers who do not allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. If you wish to use any image from our articles, email us at republish@themarkup.org for guidance.
Use the provided HTML to republish this article on your site: Simply copy the HTML that we have provided and publish it as is on your website. The provided HTML snippet includes all text formatting and hyperlinks, the author byline, and credit to The Markup. If the HTML code for The Markup credit image is incompatible with your CMS, let us know if you remove it.

How Your Attention Is Auctioned Off to Advertisers

How Your Attention Is Auctioned Off to Advertisers

Share This Article

How Your Attention Is Auctioned Off to Advertisers

The Latest

Our Real-World Impact In 2024

1 in 6 Congresswomen Targeted by AI-Generated Sexually Explicit Deepfakes

Landlords Are Using AI To Raise Rents — and Cities Are Starting To Push Back