Americans reject Behavioral Targeting
Ad networks and internet marketers will have to cope with a change in the rules of the game, when American internet users’ concerns about Behavioral Targeting and online activity tracking practices will reach the ear of politicians advocating better privacy regulations online.
At least this is what the results of “Contrary to what marketers say, Americans Reject Tailored Advertising, and three activities that enable it”, a joint research from the University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley, suggest. Online information privacy is a hot topic, not only in the US, and whilst even savvy internet users are misinformed about the implications of websites’ privacy policies, two thirds of the 1000 internet users interviewed do not welcome advertisements tailored to their interests, moreover when online (and offline) activity tracking are the founding stones of such advertising.
In fact the study shows that an additional 7% wouldn’t agree to being tracked on the same website displaying ads, 18% would averse to tracking on other websites (bringing the total number of American internet users expressing aversion to online tracking to a grand 84%), and 20% wouldn’t accept to be tracked offline.
There may be several reasons that explain why Americans reject Behavioral Targeting:
- A general concern about sharing private data online
- Antagonism to being followed without knowing how or with what effects (interaction on other sites in this case)
- A preference towards dividing browsing activity into different contexts (work, play, etc.), to avoid embarrassment at the work place for instance
- The fear of being object of selective advertisements that could put them at a monetary disadvantage (this fear would be stronger in recession times)
- General mistrust caused the web bad reputation regarding identity theft and scam sites
The way the research poses the questions during the 20 minute phone interview seems to ignore the simple fact that any internet user would prefer browsing through websites with no ads at all (except for Natural Born Clickers), instead of being disturbed by tailored or generic ads, and as The Dapper Blog pointed out, no question like “would you prefer an ad that has something to do with your interests or an ad for teeth whitening / male virility / MySpace themes?” was asked.
How to gain internet users’ trust back and sweeten the cookie
Openness and respect in disclosing how collected behavioral data is used by ad networks, and the option to delete or select what personal information websites can use are the solutions suggested by Joseph Turow, one of the authors of the research, Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Consumers can’t be educated about the benefits of targeted advertising if they aren’t provided with the tools to control over what personal data is collected by websites and how it will be used.
Moreover, the way websites’ privacy policies are presented to internet surfers is probably the most user-unfriendly example of content we can find on the internet: long, endless walls of text written in small fonts showing no effort whatsoever to make them readable and understandable.
Turow suggests ad networks adopt a friendlier, dashboard like, user interface, to allow people easily understand why they got presented a specific ad and control the information they want to share with websites. Users would access this privacy dashboard by clicking on an easily identifiable icon shown on ads.
Another solution could be the freemium approach: making premium content available only to those willing to pay for it. Sharing personal information with websites would be the price internet users could be willing to pay in order to access not only to tailored ads, coupons or news, but also movies and tv shows (YouTube), or online video games.
I expect Google taking the lead in both directions, sooner or later, especially after acquiring a bigger share of the display advertising market thanks to the recent announcement of DoubleClick Ad Exchange. And because they would do no evil.
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