Comments on: Privacy, Shmivacy – Market to me, please

By: Uriah

Uriah — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:01:52 +0000

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!

By: Shane Lundy

Shane Lundy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:46:06 +0000

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.

By: TD

TD — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:54:03 +0000

“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.