Behavioral targeting

I just lost my early morning following blog threads on discussion on behavioral targeting and the pro’s and con’s on this issue.

The nice Erin wrote a post on creating fansumers where she started a discussion on this issue, linking back to Interactive marketing trends. I’m not totally settled on my attitude towards behavioral targeting, but it is difficult. I love the thought of having the choice to share personal info in exchange for less, but more targeted ads, but I hate services sneaking it into the apps not notifing the users. But the dilemma is; does the users understand this profoundly enough to be able to choose. And are there consequences? Anyway it is a good discussion which I think we will be talking a lot about in the years to come…

I’m a bit puzzled here because I see why this kind of behavioral targeting scares people with it’s big brother feel, but on the other hand, doesn’t it do the media consumers a favor, by being able to address them with relevant ads instead of a wide range of irritating stuff. And if we as marketers can raise ROI by being relevant, perhaps we can actually stop spamming people so much. Let face it - the ads don’t disappear! This could actually be a way to make them relevant and thereby more acceptable - as we see in magazine ads… Had the same discussion going when Joost launched. If you could make the commercial break 60 secs instead of 6 minutes by giving info on you life, who wouldn’t prefer that?