Behavioural Advertising

[Scottish Business Owner]

Some of you may have came across the BT stories recently regarding their Phorm technology. This is a form of behavioural advertising that uses search information to target a user with relevant ads.

The article below details it a bit more and also tells us that all the main players have agreed a set of guidlines with regards the use of this technology.

BBC NEWS | Technology | New guidelines on behavioural ads

From a user perspective how do you feel about people being able to use such technology even though they insist the data is anonymous? Do you think you should actually have to opt in to experience it?

From a internet advertising perspective this must be quite exciting knowing that you can very tightly target your audience which should ultimately lead to far better conversions.

Your views on both please

 

[stuarty]

1.From a user perspective how do you feel about people being able to use such technology even though they insist the data is anonymous? Do you think you should actually have to opt in to experience it?

2.From a internet advertising perspective this must be quite exciting knowing that you can very tightly target your audience which should ultimately lead to far better conversions.

Your views on both please

I can't understand what the fuss is about.This has been around for 4-5 years?!?! Is this some PC Internet do gooder trying to make a name for himself? Seems to be a lot of negative spin on the increase lately which itself is positive spin for the spinner.

Anyway - answers on both points

1. Google has been doing this for years and nobody has ever complained to my knowledge. Opt in is BAD!!!!!!! Adding an opt-in links means that the data IS stored with personal/company information which is then sold at a price. Big advertisers who can afford to pay for access to the data lists will then dominate the markets. SME's would suffer because they wouldn't be able to afford the lists.

2. Again been around for years and there wasn't any excitement when it first rolled out. It doesn't target your visitors any more tightly than a keyword search does. The conversions are done on the advertisers websites not by the filtering of the ad on the focussed content networks. If the selling website hasn't done its job of converting properly then it won't convert the visitor.

 

[Tim Barlow]

If you start to combine behavioural, demographic and keyword advertising, then life starts to get very interesting!

 

[dotsno]

Pretty much every single thing you ever do online is open to being tracked and analysed. You have no idea which companies will buy each other. Imagine the amount of data that Facebook has about user interactions. If they get bought by Google, what does that mean when the data is combined with your search history? If Twitter is then bought by the same company, what does it mean about the analysis of your conversation history?

UK privacy laws won't protect you when using US sites and Google knows not only which searches you're doing, but also, if the sites use Google AdSense, which sites you're visiting. If you use Google Analytics it knows which sites you own, if you use Google Checkout it knows even more about you.

The Holy Grail that a lot of companies want is the "social graph" - who knows who, who interacts with who, what are your interests, what are their interests, where are the overlaps in your social networks, what do you purchase, from where, for whom, when, why, how do you pay, what do you do on a Saturday afternoon, how many kids do you have, how old are they, where do they shop, what does your partner do, who are the people in their social network, what time are they online, which sites do they use, what do they buy, who makes the purchasing decisions in your household, what's important to them, what do they talk about, what do they laugh about, what makes them tick?

It gets deeper and deeper - and the more you use the web and give your data to these companies, the more they will know about you and the easier they can target you and shape your behaviour. BUT.. where's the harm in that? That's up to you to decide, I'll just tell you what they do and what they can do, you make up your mind on what you want to do about it

I think one of the major problems is, as I said in a report back in 1995 when my firm was first looking at behavioural targeting and personalised advertising models, that you end up losing serendipitous discovery - the joy right now is that you may end up buying something, or interacting with someone, that you may not otherwise have bought or met. It engenders an approach that reinforces what people are already about, promoting a more small-minded approach to the world rather than opening people up to new opportunities and educating them with new possibilities - it justs targets us with what we're already about. It's incestuous; we evolve to become more like what we're already like and it doesn't help to bring new ideas into our thoughts.

 

[dotsno]

Cor, as if by magic, Google has just announced that it will start the journey into offering behavioural advertising based on its analysis of the websites you visit - not just the searches you do!

Read more on the Wall Street Journal - Google to Sell Targeted Ads - WSJ.com

 

[Tim Barlow]

Just been having a look.

It seems this applies to content network only at the moment. It will be interesting to see how quickly they bring this into search.