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?
Good post, I have something similar over at my blog. The issue that I believe privacy advocates overlook is that most of the information being collected by this behavioral targeting is something readily observable. Before the internet, your local bookseller would know who likes mystery or romance novels. He would make recomendations off of their personal preference since they were able to publically observe those actions. The internet only provides is a virtual (not real) sense of privacy.