Soon after I joined Skift, the Wall Street Journal ​ran an article that made many people think Orbitz was displaying higher prices for visitors who were using Apple products. in truth the prices weren’t different, they were simply organizing the default results page with more four- and five-star properties on the first page. Orbitz knows from years of user patterns that people who book on an Apple device are much more likely to do a four-star joint than a three-star one.

Considering all the ways consumers are targeted online, this doesn’t seem egregious to me. The search results page on a site like Orbitz never is going to tell me the perfect place; it will always be a mix of paid placement and profiling.​ So why not serve me up results it knows I’m going to buy anyway?