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Social network advertising
Social network advertising is a form of Online advertising that focuses on social networking sites. Advertising on social media networks can take the form of direct display ad buys at the social networks, self-serve advertising through internal ad networks, and ad serving on social network applications through special social network application advertising networks.

Privacy
The use of online advertising has implications on the privacy and anonymity of users. Hosting the banner images on its servers and using third-party cookies, the advertising company is able to track the browsing of users across these two sites.

Third-party cookies can be blocked by most browsers to increase privacy and reduce tracking by advertising and tracking companies without negatively affecting the user's Web experience. Many advertising operators have an opt-out option to behavioral advertising, with a generic cookie in the browser stopping behavioral advertising.

Malware
There is also a class of advertising methods which are considered unethical and may even be illegal. These include external applications which alter system settings (such as a browser's home page), spawn pop-ups, and insert advertisements into non-affiliated webpages. Such applications are usually labelled as spyware or adware. They may mask their questionable activities by performing a simple service, such as displaying the weather or providing a search bar. These programs are designed to dupe the user, acting effectively as Trojan horses. These applications are commonly designed so as to be difficult to remove or uninstall. The ever-increasing audience of online users, many of whom are not computer-savvy, frequently lack the knowledge and technical ability to protect themselves from these programs.

Advertising through social media
Businesses began to move their advertising efforts into areas by making wide use of social media from 2009. The social media includes social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Hi-5, social news tools such as Reddit, Digg Propeller, social photo & video sharing tools such as Photobucket, Flickr, YouTube and social bookmarking tools such as Del.icio.us, Simpy. One of the biggest advantages of social media advertising is proper targeting of market through the use of the users’ demographic information provided. The disadvantage is measuring effectivity of social media advertising, whether or not the number of ‘likes’, ‘friends’ or ‘follows’ could convert to actual sales.