Search Engine News: Turn On, Log in, Opt Out - The Politics of Online Targeting
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 11, 2008 | Share This
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With Yahoo’s very public and Google’s characteristically more sly announcements that they are going to an “opt out” model for targeted ads, the continued legislative scrutiny of the search advertising and marketing industry ought to be addressed. During these dog days of summer it’s not surprising to find the political class in Washington DC casting about for an issue or to two to ride on home with and give the appearance of having done some actual work.
So we’ve had a string of companies, with Google and Yahoo as the marquee players, coming before Congress to explain why and how they collect data on Internet users. NebuAd, with their ISO-level behavioral targeting, has been the poster child for bad practices during these hearings. When I blogged about that particular case I highlighted our call for industry standards for the entire behavioral marketing industry – the core being full frank disclosure and the option for users to opt out – two areas where NebuAd and their ISP partner came up short.
The surprise is that it’s the search engines - Yahoo and now Google who have felt the need to take this path. Both companies target ads to their users in ways that are broader than the NebuAd kind of “deep-packet inspection” targeting. Still, there are people who are antsy at the idea of having their behavior online tracked in any way, even over a limited set of engagements.
This is understandable – the very folks who are investigating this stuff, Congress, have already passed a bill (FISA) that retroactively endorses the principle that the government can pressure communications companies into exposing the activities of their customers unlawfully. In this kind of environment is it any wonder that people are feeling nervous about being watched and tracked?
Here’s the reality: Ad targeting is not sinister. People will be served ads no matter what. If you’re gonna see them anyway, wouldn’t you rather see ads that might be relevant to you? The engines don’t really care to track you for purposes other than to improve what they deliver – search and advertising. Anything else is bad business and a waste of time and resources.
Still, Yahoo and Google now give you the ability to opt out of their targeting. As some observers have pointed out this is partly a defensive move to avoid a potential Congressionally-mandated “opt-in” system in which users would have to say “yes” to be served these ads. So what’s so bad about opt-in rather than opt-out?
The default for most people is “set it and forget it.” If they go to a search engine or install a browser or what have you, most users go with default settings rather than customizing. That’s simply a fact of life. Going back to the question I asked before, do people really want another buckshot style ad platform which serves up much less relevant material? Starting off without the optimum experience online is a rip-off for the very people Congress purports to be protecting. Opting out at least allows users to make a choice based on experience rather than fear.
The beauty of search as an advertising platform is the ability to fine tune your message to your desired target, using data and real world results. Blunting that edge won’t stop advertising and marketing online, it will only make it less targeted – and nobody wins then.
Is this a self-serving message coming from an online marketer? Consider this – there will be marketing and advertising to be done online either way. Obscuring the ability to target makes it easier for a marketer to deliver wishy-washy results and to do all kinds of campaigns without having hard data as guidance at the outset and measurable results at the endpoint. That’s not our kind of marketing.
We would ask Congress to consider the user experience before jumping into self-serving, backslapping legislation that is all too clearly designed to shift the onus of privacy invasion away from the government and on to somewhere else. We also applaud the major search engines for offering opt-out as a solution for consumers who feel that they don’t want to be targeted. From our perspective good marketing should result in a positive experience, all the way around.
Topics: Advertising: Behavioral, Advertising: Contextual, Advertising: Online, Google, Legal Issues, Reprise Media, SEM: Paid Search, Search: News, Web Analytics |