Could Consumers Really Accept Behavioral Targeting?
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I am a regular reader of Mediapost’s many daily newsletters. It really allows me to cover the industry on a day-to-day basis, as well as get the thoughts of some of the foremost decision makers in our industry. (I highly suggest that you sign up.)
Anyway, so today, we have a post from Dave Morgan, the founder of Tacoda. His claim was that despite their “highly publicized” opt out campaign, not many people took advantage.
Now, highly publicized is not very definable, and neither is “not alot of people”. I for one, have never heard about it. In fact, tonight was the first time I visited the Tacoda website. I’m sure that they didn’t spend anywhere close to as much on their opt out campaign as they did on getting clients.
Heck why should they? So, your point that most people don’t bother opting out, is because most people - even web savvy people don’t understand the issue. The only reason I even know about Behavioral targeting is because of the discussions here on mediapost.
Just because I am shooting down Dave’s point, doesn’t mean I disagree with his principle. I just don’t think his analysis justifies his position, and I am worried that people will take his “research” at face value, and not realize that his observation is biased. (Only I’m allowed to do that!)
The truth is though, anyone that has a facebook or linkedin profile can have no complaints about privacy and targeting. I think that destroys about 95% of the complainers about privacy. Anyone else? Ohh, I forgot, the stupid politicians in Washington, that think they know more about the web than us online marketing professionals. Heck, they were the ones that invented the web.
Alright, I am letting my sarcasm get away with me, aren’t I
Regardless, online targeting is no more intrusive than offline targeting. You can get oodles of personally identifiable data offline about anyone that you want. Trust me, I’ve worked at a direct mail company. Lists of consumers are sold from one broker to the next, from the ebay mailing list (I don’t really know if ebay does sell their lists, but many others do), to the jewelry one. All with names, addresses and telephone numbers.
Online, you can only get non-personally identifiable data. No marketer knows who the browser is. All they do know is that someone on this browser has visited XYZ websites, exhibited XYZ traits, and is in XYZ location. Nothing too invasive.
Plus, there is a consumer nirvana. As the technology becomes perfected, we could eliminate all of the “zoned out” irrelevant ads, and only show us ads from advertisers that we are truly interested in.
All-in-all, this privacy issue is waay overblown in my opinion. I hope the government gets involved as little as possible. The less regulation the better. We are only at the infancy of behavioral targeting, and I’d really like to know it will increase relevance of ads for us consumers, and whether it will increase ROI for advertisers.
Agreed with the post? Do me a favor and digg this article.
Think I’m soo wrong? Do me a favor, and post why.
The entire issue has been blown out of proportion, just like click fraud.
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