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I have always assumed that advertising networks were much more sophisticated than met the eye. I made an assumption that the mixture of computing power; the ubiquitous nature of cookies and tracking code; and the broad coversage, cross-referencing and cross-pollination of the ad networks would result in a global Internet conspiracy of targeting so precise and so automated that I am seriously done for.
Well, if that is the case, then I am embroiled in a massive disinformation campaign here in the W hotel on Lexington Avenue in NYC: digitday:TARGET.
I don’t believe this is a giant plot to chaff and flare the privacy advocates and conspiracy into a lull. I really believe that no matter how brute the computing force, how savvy the algorithms, or how promiscuous the sharing might be behind the scenes, this is still an emerging market, not quite sure how to deliver the kind of one-to-one advertising and marketing targeting I had thought been commonplace since before Doubleclick was disbanded as being Evil.
Well, folks are discussing semantic advertising and targeting and all sorts of other cool stuff. I wonder if there is better, more nefarious, ways of targeting using the kinds of data that these networks are smart enough to not use — meaning, if Google or Facebook were to start to deliver contextual ads for herpes therapy to people who have searched for and purchased anti-viral therapies or herpes medicine in the past, I guarantee you that these folks would freak.
Maybe the answer could be “yes, we in fact do have everything on you, we know all of your dirty detailed; however, we’re smart enough to realize that we can’t reveal our hand or the privacy advocated will take us down with extreme prejudice, just like they did in the past” — what do you think?
Anyway, I think this has been — is being — a very valuable conference. I have to thank Dean Landsman for hooling me up with my only conference during New York Internet Week 2009.
I now have a lot of things to think about when it comes to what I do at Abraham Harrison LLC with our selection of social media marketing, earned media, blogger relations, social media engegement, Twittering strategies, and the like.
I also think that the next big thing will be the Reeces Pieces of the chocolate of Public Relations and the peanut butter of Advertising. There needs to be a confluence — and that confluence doesn’t even need to include ad agencies — social media marketing and online advertising networks really need to make a baby.
Well, anyway, for now it seems like we’re still safe from being completely crushed by the J. Edgar Hoover-like extortion of people based on their choices, their interests, their vices, and their secrets.
That said, this is not a government-sponsored event, this is only a commercial event, focusing on business and publisher data and advertising. One thing nobody every addressed is whether all of this passive attention data is being shared and with whom?
If your attention data, search data, purchasing data, download data, and browsing data were to be made available for reasons of Homeland Security, would that be OK? If your attention data can become part of a pattern-recognition campaign to track and hunt down terrorists, would that be permissible to you?
Anyway, let’s talk about this in the comments… I would love to hear what’s going on in your mind about this. I am pretty new to online advertising, to ad networks, to new technologies in targeting and metrics and quantificaltion and qualification and what not, but I am really interested in learning.
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great analogy of the Reese Pieces of chocolate and peanut butter (though wouldn’t the cups be better? Maybe the hard candy is better– smaller bites– more shareable.
great post..