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This article compares the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) technology to the use of cookies for online behavioral advertising (OBA), in the form of two competing paradigms. It seeks to explain why DPI was eliminated as a viable option due to political and regulatory reactions whereas cookies technology was not, even though it raises some of the same privacy issues.

The paradigms draw from two-sided market theory to conceptualize OBA. Empirical case studies, NebuAd's DPI platform and Facebook's Beacon program, substantiate the paradigms with insights into the controversies on behavioral tracking between 2006 and 2009 in the USA. The case studies are based on document analyses and interviews.

Comparing the two cases from a technological, economic, and institutional perspective, the article argues that both paradigms were equally privacy intrusive. Thus, it rejects the generally held view that privacy issues can explain the outcome of the battle. Politics and regulatory legacy tilted the playing field towards the cookies paradigm, impeding a competing technology.

Shifting the narrative away from privacy to competing tracking paradigms and their specific actors sheds light on the political and the regulatory rationales that were not considered in previous research on OBA. Particularly, setting forth institutional aspects on OBA – and DPI in general – the case studies provide much needed empirical analysis to reassess tracking technologies and policy outcomes.

Privacy considerations have become a topic with increasing interest from academics, industry leaders and regulators. In response to consumers’ privacy concerns, Google announced in 2020 that Chrome would stop supporting third-party cookies in the near future. At the same time, advertising technology companies are developing alternative solutions for online targeting and consumer privacy controls. This paper aims to explore privacy considerations related to online tracking and targeting methods used for programmatic advertising (i.e. third-party cookies, Privacy Sandbox, Unified ID 2.0) for a variety of stakeholders: consumers, AdTech platforms, advertisers and publishers.

This study analyzes the topic of internet user privacy concerns, through a multi-pronged approach: industry conversations to collect information, a comprehensive review of trade publications and extensive empirical analysis. This study uses two methods to collect data on consumer preferences for privacy controls: a survey of a representative sample of US consumers and field data from conversations on web-forums created by tech professionals.

The results suggest that there are four main segments in the US internet user population. The first segment, consisting of 26% of internet users, is driven by a strong preference for relevant ads and includes consumers who accept the premises of both Privacy Sandbox and Unified ID (UID) 2.0. The second segment (26%) includes consumers who are ambivalent about both sets of premises. The third segment (34%) is driven by a need for relevant ads and a strong desire to prevent advertisers from aggressively collecting data, with consumers who accept the premises of Privacy Sandbox but reject the premises of UID 2.0. The fourth segment (15% of consumers) rejected both sets of premises about privacy control. Text analysis results suggest that the conversation around UID 2.0 is still nascent. Google Sandbox associations seem nominally positive, with sarcasm being an important factor in the sentiment analysis results.

The value of this paper lies in its multi-method examination of online privacy concerns in light of the recent regulatory legislation (i.e. General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act) and changes for third-party cookies in browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Two alternatives proposed to replace third-party cookies (Privacy Sandbox and Unified ID 2.0) are in the proposal and prototype stage. The elimination of third-party cookies will affect stakeholders, including different types of players in the AdTech industry and internet users. This paper analyzes how two alternative proposals for privacy control align with the interests of several stakeholders.

The purpose of this study is to understand consumers’ use of online retail channels. This study examines how tracking capabilities, delivery speed, trust, logistics carriers’ reputation, people important to the consumer and online reviews influence Millennials’ online purchasing attitudes and intentions.

A survey was administered to 321 Millennials. Subsequently, it was used to test both direct and indirect hypotheses using structural equation modeling techniques.

The study determined that tracking capabilities, trust, people important to the consumer and online reviews directly influence online purchase attitude and by extension intention formation. The results also revealed that logistics carrier reputation moderates the trust to online purchase attitude linkage.

This work improves the explanatory power of the theory of reasoned action by linking logistics factors to online shopping behavior. Further, it provides insight into the moderating influence of logistics carriers’ reputation.

For retailers, the results provide information on how to better develop ecommerce service offerings. By providing information about logistics services and capabilities during the ecommerce transaction, retailers can improve the chance that consumers will complete online purchases.

This research fills a gap in the literature regarding how to influence millennial consumers. Moreover, findings strengthen the understanding of online-purchasing attitudes and intentions formation, important to retailers developing new online shopping platforms and technologies.

Research on online user privacy shows that empirical evidence on how privacy literacy relates to users' information privacy empowerment is missing. To fill this gap, this paper investigated the respective influence of two primary dimensions of online privacy literacy – namely declarative and procedural knowledge – on online users' information privacy empowerment.

An empirical analysis is conducted using a dataset collected in Europe. This survey was conducted in 2019 among 27,524 representative respondents of the European population.

The main results show that users' procedural knowledge is positively linked to users' privacy empowerment. The relationship between users' declarative knowledge and users' privacy empowerment is partially supported. While greater awareness about firms and organizations practices in terms of data collections and further uses conditions was found to be significantly associated with increased users' privacy empowerment, unpredictably, results revealed that the awareness about the GDPR and user’s privacy empowerment are negatively associated. The empirical findings reveal also that greater online privacy literacy is associated with heightened users' information privacy empowerment.

While few advanced studies made systematic efforts to measure changes occurred on websites since the GDPR enforcement, it remains unclear, however, how individuals perceive, understand and apply the GDPR rights/guarantees and their likelihood to strengthen users' information privacy control. Therefore, this paper contributes empirically to understanding how online users' privacy literacy shaped by both users' declarative and procedural knowledge is likely to affect users' information privacy empowerment. The study empirically investigates the effectiveness of the GDPR in raising users' information privacy empowerment from user-based perspective. Results stress the importance of greater transparency of data tracking and processing decisions made by online businesses and services to strengthen users' control over information privacy. Study findings also put emphasis on the crucial need for more educational efforts to raise users' awareness about the GDPR rights/guarantees related to data protection. Empirical findings also show that users who are more likely to adopt self-protective approaches to reinforce personal data privacy are more likely to perceive greater control over personal data. A broad implication of this finding for practitioners and E-businesses stresses the need for empowering users with adequate privacy protection tools to ensure more confidential transactions.

While documents librarians are generally familiar with document usage through their circulation statistics, they have no idea of how publications are being accessed online. The University of Denver has developed a system for tracking online document access. By redirecting every URL in their OPAC for federal documents first to a ColdFusion database, recording the URL, and then sending the user to the online document, they were able to track each access to online documents. Then, importing these statistics into an Access database, they were able to provide an analysis by agency, date of document, and other features. This article presents the results of one year of tracking access through the University of Denver library OPAC.

Using the internet parallel to or after television (TV) consumption changes the way people receive news. The way information is framed by the media has been found to influence the behavior of news recipients. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that the exposure to TV media frames would affect a lay audience’s online information-seeking behavior.

In an experiment combining eye tracking and content analysis, participants (n=72) were exposed to one of three TV clips with different media frames (based on a full-sample content analysis) that focused on Alzheimer’s disease. After exposure, participants informed themselves about the issue online. Eye tracking allows to investigate whether individuals mainly scan information, or whether they compute information on a higher level of attention (use more thorough deliberate comparison of information and really reading information).

Three different frames of online content were identified. Framing was found to influence the individual online searching and reading of information on a descriptive level (entering search words and viewing website content) to some degree, but not on a procedural level (such as selecting online search results).

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature embedding an established theoretical process like framing effects into the internet literature. Regarding the broader theoretical context, this study shed some light on cross-media framing effects on online behavior. Applying the psychological perspective of framing theory to explain and predict online searching behavior is beneficial for specific types of online search behavior. Main limitations are the not representative student sample and the forced task that participants had to inform themselves about Alzheimer’s disease online.

The results have practical implications for the creation of TV-related websites. There can be a positive, profitable synergy of TV and online websites. The websites can complement the TV programs with the focus on information needs of the recipients depending on the TV activated audience frames. Therefore, media managers would do well to plan the contents of their websites as internet-based resources that meet the activated information needs.

This study is among the first to investigate the framing effects of TV on the online information searching behavior of individuals. A deeper understanding of how media frames, especially from TV, are affecting online information seeking will allow researchers to better explain and predict online user behavior and information needs. But still, more research is needed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel registration method using Euclidean reconstruction and natural features tracking for AR‐based assembly guidance systems.

The method operates in two steps: offline Euclidean reconstruction and online tracking. Offline stage involves obtaining the structure of scene using Euclidean reconstruction technique. The classification trees are constructed using affine transform for online initialization. In tracking, the classification‐based wide baseline matching strategy and T_d,d test are used to get a fast and accurate initialization for the first frame after which a modified optical flow tracker is used to fulfill the task of feature tracking in the real‐time video sequences. The four specified points are transferred to the current image to compute the registration matrix for augmentation.

Firstly, Euclidean reconstruction was used instead of projective reconstruction to get the projections of predefined features. Compared with the six points needed in projective reconstruction‐based method, this method can run normally even when only four features are successfully tracked. Secondly, an adaptive strategy was proposed to adjust the classification trees using the tracked features in online stage by which one can initialize or reinitialize the system, even with large difference between the first and reference images.

Some indoor and outdoor experiments are provided to validate the performance of the proposed method.

Self-tracking is becoming a prominent and ubiquitous feature in contemporary practices of health and wellness management. Over the last few years, we have witnessed a rapid development in digital tracking devices, apps and platforms, together with the emergence of health movements such as the Quantified Self. As the world is becoming increasingly ruled by metrics and data, we are becoming ever more reliant on technologies of tracking and measurement to manage and evaluate various spheres of our lives including work, leisure, performance, and health. This chapter begins with a brief outline of some of the key theoretical approaches that have been informing the scholarly debates on the rise of self-tracking. The chapter then moves on to discuss at length the findings of an international survey study conducted by the author with users of self-tracking technologies to discuss the ways in which they perceive and experience these practices, and the various rationales behind their adoption of self-tracking in the first place. The chapter also addresses participants’ attitudes towards issues of privacy and data sharing and protection which seem to be dominated by a lack of concern regarding the use and sharing of self-tracking data with third parties. Some of the overarching sentiments vis-à-vis these issues can be roughly categorised according to feelings of ‘trust’ towards companies and how they handle data, a sense of ‘resignation’ in the face of what is perceived as an all-encompassing and ubiquitous data use, feelings of ‘self-insignificance’ which translates into the belief that one’s data is of no value to others, and the familiar expression of ‘the innocent have nothing to hide’. Overall, this chapter highlights the benefits and risks of self-tracking practices as experienced and articulated by the participants, while providing a critical reflection on the rise of personal metrics and the culture of measurement and quantification.

The paper aims to cover the institutional decision‐making processes behind the decision to add machine readable cataloging records to the library catalog that link to hundreds of thousands of URLs with freely available web content, the management processes making this possible, as well as other more philosophical concerns.

This is a case study conducted at the University of Denver, Penrose Library.

Implementing a URL tracking system, combined with a philosophical decision to follow a proactive URL maintenance approach rather than a reactive one, has resulted in an improved error rate for URL click‐throughs.

The paper addresses URL maintenance issues, staffing solutions, and error rates not addressed elsewhere in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed and critical look at the evolution of online survey research since Evans and Mathur’s (2005) article on the value of online surveys. At that time, online survey research was in its early stages. Also covered are the present and future states of online research. Many conclusions and recommendations are presented.

The look back focuses on online surveys, strengths and weaknesses of online surveys, the literature on several aspects of online surveys and online survey best practices. The look ahead focuses on emerging survey technologies and methodologies, and new non-survey technologies and methodologies. Conclusions and recommendations are provided.

Online survey research is used more frequently and better accepted by researchers than in 2005. Yet, survey techniques are still regularly transformed by new technologies. Non-survey digital research is also more prominent than in 2005 and can better track actual behavior than surveys can. Hybrid surveys will be widespread in the future.

The paper aims to provide insights for researchers with different levels of online survey experience. And both academics and practitioners should gain insights.

Adhering to a strong ethics code is vital to gain respondents’ trust and to produce valid results.

Conclusions and recommendations are offered in these specific areas: defining concepts, understanding the future role of surveys, developing and implementing surveys and a survey code of ethics. The literature review cites more than 200 sources.