Money
Most of the reasons for tracking you boil down to money, which is what the industry is all about. Let's examine some reasons.
To Show You Targeted Advertising
If an ad company knows your interests, they can tailor ads to match. This increases the likelihood you will click their ad, and increases their chances of getting paid. Although these ads may be relevant and interesting to you, they come at the price of giving up some privacy. For example, if an ad company tracks you across two sites, they know what sites you visited, exactly what you clicked and how long you looked at each page. With this information they make guesses about you and build a profile.
Shopping for diapers and strollers? Must be a parent.
Shopping for Ferraris and Rolex? Likely wealthy.
Looking at doctors in the Minneapolis area? Must have an illness and live in Minneapolis.
They then serve up ads relevant to these guesses: Exotic car dealerships, baby stores, and physician groups.
This can become scarily accurate in a big hurry.
Why They Track You
To Provide Website Analytics
Website publishers may hire a third-party analytics company to examine how users move around on their website. This allows the website publisher to determine what is successful and not successful in their design. For example, the website publisher realizes through analytics that a particular page is never viewed, and removes it, or, the website publisher realizes that more people click ads if they are near the "check out" button, and creates more ad space in that general area of the page.
To Sell Your Data
Collected data is worth money to someone, and a good business will know how to capitalize. Your data might be worth $0.003 for say, your gender, or $0.30 for your sports and activity interests. This seems like small amounts of money, but don't forget multiply the value by millions of users.
To Create Advertising Marketplaces
In addition to advertising companies functioning as third-party trackers, there are companies functioning like third-party marketplaces.
Marketplace companies hold the advertising space on a website and collect tracking data about you like any other tracker. But instead of creating an advertisement themselves, they hold a virtual auction to advertisers competing to put their ad on your screen. The highest bidder wins of course, and their ad is loaded on your screen. All of this happens before the page is finished loading on your browser.
How much is your data worth?
In 2013, the Financial Times created a calculator to roughly estimate how much your data is worth to a third-party tracker.
Some things you should know before using:
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The Financial Times claims the data you enter into the calculator (none of it is highly personalized anyway) will be not collected, stored or shared.
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There are 18 third-party trackers on this Financial Times webpage.
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Therefore, the data you enter into the calculator at the bottom of the page may not be tracked, but you certainly will be.
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If the number of trackers discourage you from visiting the calculator, please continue through our website and return to the calculator after you have learned how to protect yourself from trackers.