Targeted advertising: how does it work? The Wall Street Journal made waves in the Apple community on Monday night by publishing a piece implying that travel company Orbitz had been "steering" Mac users towards higher prices on its website. The news took off on Twitter immediately, with Mac users pronouncing that Orbitz had lost their business and others retweeting claims that Orbitz was actually charging Mac users higher prices than Windows users for the same services. The frenzy, at least from my perspective, was in full force.
Upon further investigation, it turned out that things were not as they first seemed. In the piece, Orbitz talks about how it has identified Mac users as being more willing to spend higher amounts of money on hotels than their PC-using friends. Mac users might spend $20-30 more per night on a hotel, and are 40 percent more likely to book a four- or five-star hotel than PC users. The demographic data is there, and it's not even that surprising—Macs have long been associated with a slightly wealthier demographic, and it's hardly a shock to see that a travel site's usage data seems to reflect that.
As such, Orbitz has begun showing nicer, more expensive options—in some cases—to Mac users performing hotel searches. The Wall Street Journal found that its searches in a number of major cities showed the same results for Macs and PCs. Other cities, like Miami Beach, resulted in boutique hotels for Mac users on the first page of results, while those same hotels were not on the first page for PC users. "Overall, hotels on the first page of the Mac search were about 11% more expensive than they were on the PC," the newspaper wrote.
So, let's be clear: Orbitz is not charging Mac users higher prices for the same hotels. Orbitz is using browser data as part of its algorithm to target its audience. In this case, the audience has been shown to be willing to spend more on nicer hotels. Orbitz is in the business of making money, so they would be silly to not present those options first to the right demographic.
This is the entire purpose of targeted advertising, and targeted services in general. Most Ars readers are familiar with how targeted ads work, and now we are getting a taste for what it's like to be treated differently by a business based on who you are and what you're using. In reality, there are probably many businesses that already do this, but Orbitz made the PR-misstep of openly talking to the press about it and making users aware of the practice. They might have been better served keeping their mouths shut if they had known there would be such a potential backlash from the Apple community.
For me, there is no outrage. Why? there is no "Apple Tax" being levied. Prices for the same hotels are the same for both Mac users and Windows users. Mac users aren't being blocked from finding cheaper hotels. It's still easy to search for specific hotels that you want and all of Orbitz's normal user controls are still effective on the Mac. Some more expensive hotels might show up on the first page of your search results, but the secret is: you don't have to book them. If you are budget conscious, you are still able to make decisions on hotels based on what works for you—you're not beholden to what Orbitz spits out for you at the top of the page.
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