Ever since the release of George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, people have been leery of anything that seems "Orwellian," and the Internet is no exception. The media has done its share of perpetuating these fears with threats of computer viruses, hackers and identity thieves not to mention all the child predators and serial murderers waiting to meet you on MySpace. One of the common fears is that "big brother is watching you" while you surf, shop and connect online. How realistic are these fears? Do marketers know that you, John Smith, are reading this article right now? And, are privacy groups misleading individuals in trying to enforce a "Do Not Track" list comparing it to the "Do Not Call" phone list?
I recently conducted a statistically insignificant focus group of six friends regarding their perception of behavioral targeting (a.k.a. behavioral advertising or behavioral marketing) online. My friends are all non-advertising people and people who don't spent a great amount of time online each week (in other words, they have more of a life than I do). Although, I expected their reactions to the term "behavioral targeting" to be unfavorable or ambivalent, I didn't expect their perceptions of it to be so completely off from reality.
Unanimously, they all believed that their personal information (i.e., name, phone, email, social security, dog's name, etc.) was associated with behavioral targeting. That in some large data dump, there's a lifetime's worth of online behavior being collected, from what they purchased for Aunt Sue last Christmas to the stocks they researched this morning. My friend, a teacher, also believed that behavioral advertising was somehow responsible for opting her into education email lists without her permission. Therefore, spam was a result of this targeting.
I imagine my friends aren't alone in their misconceptions, therefore, let's start with the basics, like defining what behavioral targeting is. According to Wikipedia, "Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to display to that individual." In short, ads are targeted to consumers based on their previous activity. For example, if someone was searching for a flight to the Caribbean on a travel site, then later when they were checking a news site, they may see a special fare to the Caribbean.
This tracking is conducted through the use of a web-server's cookies (small, unique identifiers stored on surfers' hard disks when they visit a particular Web page) and does not connect individuals to personally identifiable information (PII) like name, address, phone number, etc. Cookies are not computer programs, spy ware or viruses and independently are meaningless. In fact, I would go as far as saying that cookies help individuals by personalizing their favorite website, storing the contents of one's electronic shopping cart, helping publishers understand a visitor's needs and providing prospects with exclusive and relevant offers through behavioral targeting.
Behavioral targeting is actually addressing the consumer complaint of having to be exposed to irrelevant ads during a web session. Instead, consumers can be served relevant offers based on their current needs. Based on their behavior, once they are out of market, then they will no longer be served that ad. It's a way listening to consumers without overtly asking them. This is a completely different proposition than being spammed by email or phone. Interrupting someone during dinner to offer him or her something they don't need is different than presenting an offer to a consumer based on their history while they are looking at a placement specifically designed for an advertisement; especially when that advertisement enables the individual to receive the free content that they are consuming.
On the marketing side, advertisers have a responsibility to work with reputable publishers and behavioral companies and to deliver relevant messaging to consumers. Serving the same advertisement to one visitor fifty times and calling it behavioral targeting is not going to work and will more likely turn a prospect off. Behavioral targeting is more than a line item on an Excel sheet and requires some insight and analysis. For example, aggressively targeting diaper ads to an individual who purchased an infant product may be misleading without looking at the larger context. After all, they may have been purchasing that product as a gift.
It's been twenty-three years since 1984 and fifty-nine years since Orwell wrote his classic, and a lot has changed in the advertising world. As Time magazine featured in its December 2006 issue: "You," the web consumer, are "Person of the Year." Consumers are in control and advertisers know it. Behavioral targeting is just another method of giving individuals what they want, and when they want it.