Such an ability promises a raised level of micromarketing, giving advertisers a better chance of showing users an ad they will respond to. The biometric information is usually enough to differentiate among a group of as many as 20 users. Though Predictive's technology could be used to guess a user's sex or age, that information doesn't play a role in the service Predictive is offering. Predictive maintains that knowing what Web sites people regularly visit is more useful for targeting ads than broad demographic information. The biometric data enables Predictive to know when it's the same user visiting different types of sites.
Men click a lot more often.
He says the technology can even determine whether a man is watching alone or is watching with his wife and has control of the clicker. When he's with his wife, a man will typically only switch channels during commercial breaks, but then he may hit several different channels searching for sports scores. ISPs already use Predictive's services to build silhouettes of Web sites visited through a person's computer. Subscribers agree to allow the tracking in exchange for low-priced Web access, and Predictive says it doesn't keep records of names or addresses. But some privacy advocates have likened the service to unauthorized eavesdropping.