Strangely though, the data revolution, at least as it relates to advertising, seems to have passed the link by. The cookie is where much of the excitement and focus around new data sources for targeting and optimization rests. “BlueKaing” data (a term I heard for the first time a couple of weeks ago) has now become a verb to describe the re-emergent cookie economy. This unbridled buzz caused Andy Monfried of Lotame to caution the display community last week to look beyond the cookie for targeting.

“The holy grail is not just cookie targeting, but to see the linkage between the top of the funnel and the bottom.”

Yet the cookie is being used by every color of advertiser including (or especially) Google to target campaigns to “audiences” or to “in-market” rather than to specific sites. Some of the excitement around cookie data is justified but it is also fraught with a host of challenges to publishers and advertisers, almost none of which protect the best interests of either.

In contrast, the link economy is immune to the issues swarming around the cookie economy, even furthering my consternation about why the link economy is so grossly undervalued and under-hyped. The reality is using the link as a set of rules for content/ad delivery has implications much more far reaching than landing pages and URL shorteners. As anyone who has made money on the web through transactions can attest, since the inception of the commercial web, the link is its most valuable currency.