$26 billion-a-year by 2011, the internet advertising market is lucrative to venture capitalists who want to invest into companies that help target online advertising. Between 2007 and 2010, venture firms invested $4.7 billion in 356 online-ad firms. "Its a huge market and it's growing," Chris Fralic at First Round Capital says. Fralic's company has backed 33Across, which analyzes users' social networks, and Demdex, which has a "behavioral bank" of user profiles. Ethically, user on-line privacy is at issue. I contend that user privacy can be protected from dangers of concern to users while willing users can benefit as consumers from information regarding products that they want and would not otherwise know of.
The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, which is available at Amazon.