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Uriah Av-Ron works for Oasis PR and is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. You can contact him at uriah@oasis-pr.com.

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Privacy, Shmivacy – Market to me, please

Written on
Jul 9, 2009 
Author
Uriah Av-Ron  |
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Privacy, Shmivacy – Market to me, please

hiring.jpgADOTAS — The vision of direct marketing has long been about narrowcasting the marketer’s message to a market of one, where a prospect gets a marketing message that is so clearly tailored to their individual needs (that they immediately buy the product or service).

This was the vision of the direct marketing industry when I studied marketing in the 1980s, and this vision moved closer to reality with the arrival of the Internet and the increase of easily accessible targeting data.

In May, I wrote my monthly bylined commentary suggesting that The New York Times should take a look at The Economist (based in part on an article Matt Pressmen had written for Vanity Fair about why Time and Newsweek won’t be like The Economist).

Well guess what happened? Both The New York Times and The Economist reached out to me.

My first thought? Why didn’t I write about Natalie Portman instead (OK, so that wasn’t really my first thought). To be honest, sales people (and not the editors-in-chief) from both publications reached out to me, one to offer me a trial of their new interactive interface, and the other to inform me about a new feature.

But this experience got me thinking about direct marketing opportunities made possible through today’s more social and easily trackable media.

If companies are going to monitor what I say, wouldn’t be easier if I simply told them what I wanted?

What if there was a place online – a ‘ThisIsWhatIWant’ widget – where I could write the things I wanted, and a marketer could reach out to me and make me a relevant offer?

Forrester Research analyst Emily Riley touched on this very subject in her address at OMMA Behavioral in February, correctly claiming that Gen Y-ers post pictures of themselves doing illegal things on Facebook and then go for job interviews not thinking it’s a big deal. Do you really think they’d mind if companies used public, behaviorally targeted information in order to provide them with more relevant offers for the products and services they want?

Think about it. If you were in the market for a hybrid car, wouldn’t you rather receive detailed offers from a few local dealers than see general car ads wherever you surf the web because you spent 23 minutes on Cars.com last week?

Buying a hybrid car is an easier choice to make because there aren’t that many options. If I were in the market for a 32” TV with delivery and installation to Poughkeepsie by next Friday, I’m sure several retailers would be interested in servicing me, and maybe even trying to upsell me with a new DVD player.

If search campaigns provide among the best ROI for marketers, imagine the ROI for a widget which enabled marketers to target users who want the very products they sell? And if users could rate marketers, throwing out those that try and sell products unrelated to a user’s wants, we would have a great solution that would offer users products and services that they truly wanted.

Now that is something that I’d want. What about you?





Reader Comments.

“Do you really think they’d mind …”

Well, Mr. Av-Ron, why don’t you ask them? You seem weak on the notion that privacy is about consent. When you guess at the motives and tolerance of your customers instead of asking them, you’re getting ahead of yourself — and them.

It further seems incredibly backward-minded to tell customers how they should behave in the face of your business, rather than you actually finding out what they want, and making that effort based around open communication and disclosure vs. a “do you think they’d mind?” mentality. Don’t guess. Do the work.

Privacy is not a monolithic concept, and the principles are not difficult to grasp. The least people in PR and business could do is learn a little more about how these things work, rather than deciding by decree that it’s time for lowly customers to simply abide by what they want.

Posted by TD | 8:54 am on July 7, 2009.

Uriah,
Glad to see that self targeting is now top of mind with you. I also believe that asking a user to select who gets to advertise to them is the tip of the behavioral targeting spear. My company, SponsorSelect, is a premium ad network that is reinventing behavioral targeting. Built atop a robust ad server that has already been deployed with numerous publishers, including Fandango, Demand Media and WeatherBug, SponsorSelect allows Internet users to choose the advertising they wish to see. It’s not a widget, we present SponsorSelect where consumers are already seeing natural breaks such as a pre roll in front of video or game content. We simply tell the user “This game is brought to you by Chevy (for example) or the sponsor you choose”. The user is not required to select and if they don’t, Chevy would be their sponsor in this example. The list of sponsors to choose from are sold by my company based on the site demographics and will eventually leverage contextual data sets when the privacy concerns around behavioral targeting subsides.
We have presented our solution to over 30mm unique users and have found two really important findings. 1) Consumers like having choice and control over the advertising they see as long as the right value exchange exist. 2) When consumers choose a sponsor they are more likely to buy. We call it On-Demand advertising and our goal is to eliminate media waste, reduce the amount of advertising consumers see and increase the availability of professional produced content for consumers.

Posted by Shane Lundy | 2:46 pm on July 7, 2009.

TD — Thanks for taking the time to comment.

The premise I’m talking about in the ‘ThisIsWhatIWant’ widget is for people to volunteer what they want in order to receive better targeted advertising (for those products). Those who do not volunteer what the want will simply not be targeted in the manner.

Shane — Thanks for your comments, too!

Posted by Uriah | 5:01 pm on July 7, 2009.

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