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Tracking the Advertisers: ‘ScreenDatify’ Data Collection and Project Evolution
Ads are constantly tracking us and advertisers are learning everything they can about us. What if I tracked the ads they showed me? What would I find? I started collecting data in January.
It all started while I was watching Samantha Bee and Randy Rainbow comedy videos on YouTube and the advertisements seemed really unusual for the content of the videos. At first, I thought I was imagining how often I was seeing these ads. So, I decided to start keeping track of them. As I started capturing data, I saw that I needed to build some tools to help with this. The ‘ScreenDatify’ project grew out of those initial observations.
As the project grew and evolved, it became obvious that it could be useful to anyone interested in tracking advertisements. Journalists, in particular, might utilize them to track political advertising in the coming campaign cycle.
ScreenDatify? What is that?
I wanted to track the ads I was shown on youtube. Since they appear on my browser screen, and I was collecting data about it, ‘ScreenDatify’ seemed like a reasonable project name. At least to start with. It became the name of the web-extension I’ll describe later.
