Behavioral targeting (BT) has been around since the first dotcom days. In late 2007 it rose to fame again thanks to a few big promoters like Facebook; and in early 2008 it ignited a firestorm of debate that continues to unfold before us each day. But what is it, what does it claim to do and why the surrounding debate?
BT tracks a web visitor’s browser-click-streams, typically in the last six visits, to predict what the visitor may want in the future, and target ads, content or products based on those “personalized” past behaviors. The hope is that BT will show the right ad or product to the right user who is most susceptible to it. This sounds ideal to advertisers, but, put yourself in the shoes of a user and two huge problems leap out: privacy and quality.
The Privacy Issue: One of Many Problems
With such a glut of products and information online, the motivation behind behavioral targeting makes sense – it seems to be a good thing for Yahoo to get me a more relevant ad because they happen to know I checked out a Prius in my local dealership. For consumers, however, there is an obvious psychological aversion to behavioral targeting, as they feel they are being personally tracked and watched.
In this age of identity theft and mounting concerns over privacy in general, a practice that proactively profiles a user, perhaps over the scope of many websites and over a period of several months, will sound alarms even among the least conservative of us. And while BT advocates will defend their practice of storing only anonymous data -- which is the proper thing to do -- knowing that your likes, dislikes, shopping history, and viewing tendencies are being tracked and possibly shared or sold to advertisers is disconcerting at the least.
In addition, with so much information about us on the web, an anonymous individual on one site can quickly become a known/named user on another site once BT starts to compare and contrast user behaviors across multiple sites. So our private information can spread out very quickly without us even knowing it.
Not surprisingly, many advocacy groups are very concerned about the issues surrounding this type of targeting. Last year, privacy groups proposed a “Do not Track” list to limit behavioral profiling techniques similar to “Do Not Call” lists that keep pesky telemarketers away Consumers are becoming more aware of how their information is being used and even Web 2.0 darling Facebook has experienced a massive backlash from users who didn’t want their information tracked or sold.
Recently, headlines about these high profile privacy snafus prompted New York assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky to draft a bill that would make it a punishable crime for Web companies like AOL, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to provide personal information to third-party vendors. And earlier this month news spread like wildfire across the World Wide Web of UK phone company BT’s unauthorized use of its business customer’s financial information during a trial run for software provided by analytics and ad-serving company Phorm. Consumer advocates in Britain are confident that several of those customers may have had grounds for a lawsuit; a government investigation is currently underway.
Privacy concerns and potential lawsuits aside, behavioral targeting has yet more holding it back.
The Bigger Pitfalls of Behavioral Targeting
Beyond privacy concerns, there are accuracy and quality issues with BT that all marketers may not be aware of. Traditional BT struggles precisely because it tries to discern what I want now based on my past behaviors. Consider the impact of focusing on historical interests instead of current intent – if I bought a gag gift for a bachelor party, I certainly do not want to be bombarded by ads for similar “products” that might cause embarrassment or make me the butt of the joke around the office.
Another way to think of this problem is the idea of roles or personalization. Humans have far too many roles in life – or what personalization systems might call profiles – to possibly predict what a given user wants on that day. A woman shopping for baby clothes, a tie for her husband, and a gift for her sister may appear schizophrenic because she is acting in three different roles – mother, wife, and sister. What do you show her next? Tossing ads at her about strollers is not going to appeal to her now that she’s shopping for a new cocktail dress for herself.
This is the pitfall of profiles. In a given month, an individual will have thousands of roles. Knowing my past is not necessarily a better way to predict my future. In fact, this phenomenon has been known by psychologists and other scientists for years - humans are animals of context and situations, much less so of our historical profiles or roles.
Let’s look at Facebook’s behavioral targeting practices. A few months back, Alex Iskold posted a good
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