Economics of IP Geolocation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation_software

One application is marketing.

• Marketing needs to take these factors into consideration:
• Geographic region (is sex advertisement okay in China? what restaurants are near me? what's the sense of surfing equipment advertisement if I live in Colorado?)
• Organization (If you know I'm from USC, shouldn't you overwhelm me with USC fans' stuff?)
• Internet connection (I have broadband, offer me more fancy data-intensive application)

And IP address can be mapped to these factors by means

• RIR (ARIN, RIPE NCC, APNIC, LACNIC, AfriNIC)
• Weather websites (ZIP code, city)
• Google map (my default address...)
• Online Social Network (my current network, events' location)
• Any website you provided your address.

An IP address could be related to other information in your profile, like your age, your gender, you interests, you favourite musician, and based on these factors, your world will be further narrowed and personalized by marketers.
I guess the fundamental goal of these marketers is to gain this IP-to-Human mapping, if I know a.b.c.d is Claire, and I know Claire likes cakes, then I'm going to overwhelm her with all the fancy cakes near her apartment.

However, IP-to-Human mapping changes fast thanks to the dynamic addressing. The intermediate mappings in this IP-to-Human mapping are

• IP-to-Host (your desktop, laptop, iPhone)
• Host-to-Human
  

The dynamic addressing happens at IP-to-Host level. It changes quicker for Chinese DSL users (I guess? at least my dad shut down the modem quite often... but as Chinese get richer...), and slower for American cable modem users (I forgot the last time I shut down my modem...). But since more stuff are more mobile, I guess this IP-to-Host mapping's dynamics will keep increasing..

So the marketers have this headache with IP-to-Human mapping, however, people found IP-to-Geo is relatively more stable. So marketers don't care a.b.c.d is Claire, they just care a.b.c.d is someone living in Los Angeles, CA. And people living in LA like to party and surfing.. lol (obviously it doesn't apply for all, and they have better means to improve their knowledge about you..)

So... don't think there are so many great FREE services online... They know how to make money without your knowing. The more free services you use, the more exposed you are, and the more personalized your web is. Sometimes it's great though, I don't care live events in NYC. Sometimes it can be harmful, like my mentor once told me, the insurance company can decline to offer you plan because you searched too many times "AIDS".