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Consumers and Behavioural Targeting Despite the current media debate about privacy on the internet, most consumers remain unaware of the scale of commercial effort trying to track where they go online. So far the vast amount of news, information and services online has been funded by advertising – to be successful, this relies on a battery of tracking technology and all this effort has been racked up a notch with the advent of behaviourally targeted online advertising. Now consumers are starting to notice, as increased media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic has focused attention on “personal digital information.” In June a US Judge ruled for Microsoft that IP addresses (the numerical code used to route data across the Internet) are not personal information, identifying only the computer and not the person. But an entirely different view is taken by the EU Commission. They have decreed that an IP address is “personal information” and have instructed search engines to “expunge users’ IP addresses as soon as possible.” IP tracking is already hugely used for tracking Internet behaviour by all sorts of companies, search engines and publishers. The UK has historically always been more relaxed about privacy matters; we have more surveillance cameras on our streets than anywhere else in the world. But in Europe the pressure for action is growing. The European Commission is investigating the UK Government’s role in behavioural targeting tests by BT and Phorm in 2006, leading to the recent mass exodus of customers from Phorm. In the US, a group of companies that includes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! has created a report on “Self-Regulation in Behavioral Advertising,” attempting to head off any aggressive Federal regulation there. There is clearly some consumer confusion at the very idea of privacy – millions have Nectar and Tesco Clubcards, but there has been resistance to the National ID scheme. So for behavioural targeting, what do we need to beware of if we are not to spook consumers? Understanding behaviour is part of the story, but when it is used inappropriately or in a way which doesn’t add value to the message, yet exposes the machinery behind the ad, we get the worst of both worlds. If we understand properly both the consumer needs and the context in which the ad is displayed, then we can give consumers real value (or at the very least a perception of value) without invading their space. this article was originally published in The Leveller magazine |
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