Airline Launches Targeted Web Advertising

According to a report in the New York Times, Alaska Airlines is launching a system of targeted advertising on their website, based on consumer interests. The system uses cookies to track the consumer's web habits and targets airline promotions and prices based on the information gathered.

The prices available to one consumer may be higher or lower than offered to another consumer, based on their personal information. According to the Times report, "The company is starting to feed data about which people click on its ads to a company called Proclivity Systems, which analyzes how price-sensitive customers seem to be. Then, in an instant, one customer gets an offer for a flight from Seattle to Portland for $99 and another is quoted $109."

The system is very similar to one used by Yahoo to target their retail ads based on the user's online retail activity, and is raising privacy concerns in some.