Twitter will be the latest Internet company to join the list of organizations employing controversial technology, Reuters reported.
Users of Twitter will now experience the effects of increasingly widespread tracking technology as Twitter will be able to feature ads based on the users browsing history, Twitter announced on Thursday.
According to Reuters, Twitter's new advertising feature allows marketers to use cookies - small files planted in Web surfers' computers that contain bits of information about which sites they've visited or where they are logging in from - to display highly targeted Twitter ads.
Joining the likes of Google Inc, Facebook Inc and Amazon Inc and countless other Internet companies that rely on the technology to serve ads, the Twitter feature, which went into effect last month, first announced in July that it would begin testing cookie-based ad targeting.
Expected to raise advertising rates and revenues for the company, this new feature arrives in the midst of heightened public debate over the erosion of online privacy, Reuters reported.
In recent years, both the European Union and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission have probed the extent of tracking technologies used by sites like Facebook. Last year, European authorities began requiring websites to inform users that cookies were being placed on their computers.
Users who check the "Do Not Track" option in their browsers will have the option to disable the feature and Twitter said it would abide by that request. The company said that users can also choose not to receive "promoted content" in their Twitter privacy settings.
Reuters reported that 10 companies, including BlueKai, AdRoll and Quantcast, will initially provide the tracking data. The nascent ad network will not yet include real-time bidding technology, which competitors like Facebook have employed.