Behavioral Targeting and Privacy

Behavioral Targeting and Online Privacy is taking an interesting turn. Yesterday I wrote about Privacy groups proposal to create “Do-Not-Track” for online behavioral targeting just like “Do-Not-Call” list to stop telemarketers from contacting the people on the list.

To counter these groups, AOL took a proactive step by announcing the launch of Privacy education program for Behaviorally Targeted Advertising.

AOL is doing exactly what I wrote in April of this year in an article related to privacy

"I believe that if consumers are provided proper education then they can in fact benefit from Behavioral Targeting. It will be a win-win situation for all the parties involved. Proper education and disclosures by advertisers, publishers and networks will ease the concerns regarding Behavioral Targeting. Consumers have the right to opt out of Behavioral Targeting but what is lacking is proper education on how to do so."

According to an AOL press release:

Program Will Provide Greater Transparency, Enhanced Notice of How Targeted Advertising Works, and Patent-Pending Technology to Protect Consumers' Opt-Out Choices; The Program Will Reach More Than 91% of Online Consumers


“Our goal with this program is to engender greater trust for targeted advertising by communicating with consumers in a more visible way, and by providing them more information about their choices,” said Curt Viebranz, President of Platform-A. “AOL believes that doing more to explain to users the choices they have over the way their data is used, and helping them exercise those preferences will help them feel more in control.”


I also wrote in the previous article:

“The networks currently opt-in users by default; however, in my opinion the proper process should be opt-out by default and opt-in if user chooses to opt-in, just like we do for emails and newsletters. This process will move the burden from users to the advertisers, publishers and networks.”

I don’t think we are going to get opt-in process in near future, here is what AOL talked about the opt-out process:

The expanded use of the TACODA opt-out technology will help better preserve consumer choices. Today, users who opt-out of behavioral targeting by using an opt-out cookie risk having their preference lost if they later delete their cookies. TACODA leverages a Web cache technique to preserve a consumers' opt-out choice even if they delete their browser cookies, something other opt-out systems cannot currently do. AOL is also exploring opportunities to license this technology on a royalty-free basis for use exclusively in consumer privacy protection programs.

“We want to make the opt-out process as simple and transparent as possible,” said Jules Polonetsky, Chief Privacy Officer, AOL. “We urge the industry to join us in ensuring that users who take steps to minimize the data they provide have their choices maintained.”

In another article titled “Online Marketers Joining Internet Privacy Efforts” NYTimes.com writes:

AOL says it is setting up a new Web site that will link consumers directly to opt-out lists run by the largest advertising networks. The site’s technology will ensure that people’s preferences are not erased later.
There is a silver lining for marketers, however: the AOL site will try to persuade people that they should choose to share some personal data in order to get pitches for products they might like. Most Web sites, including AOL, already collect data about users to send them specific ads — but AOL is choosing to become more open about the practice and will run advertisements about it in coming months.

I think this is a very smart move by AOL/Tacoda, if it can convince consumers about the benefit of Behavioral Targeting then why not take one step further and have these consumers provide more information about themselves.

Other posts that I recommend
1. Privacy
1. Behavioral Targeting

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Behavioral Targeting better than Contextual Advertising

Finally a new study is out showing the value of Behavioral Targeting. AOL and Revenue Science commissioned
JupiterResearch to conduct an independent unbiased study to find the effectiveness of Behavioral Targeting.

The results were based on 2035 respondents answering 25 questions.
Key Findings of this study

1. Behavioral ads outperform contextual ads by up to 22% (I think it is the CTR that was compared).


2. 66% of the online user acted as a result of viewing online ads).


3. 14% more online consumers are more receptive to behaviorally targeted ads than to contextual ads. That is 63% of the total audience.


4. 93% of the BT receptive audience shop online


5. BT receptive audience




• Spend more online


• Shop online more often


• Have higher income




6. Online Shoppers (Frequent, Infrequent) and Non Shopper are all more receptive to BT ads as compared to Contextual Ads.


7. At least 10% more purchase intenders across 14 categories noticed BT ads as compared to contextual ads. The categories used in this survey were financial services, Auto, Travel, Health Products, Consumer Electronics, Computing Products, Telecommunications, Entertainment, Classifieds, Pharmaceuticals, CPG, Fashion/Style, Education Services and Government Services
   

"We're glad to see that the voice of the online consumer echoes our position that behavioral targeting is more effective -- for advertisers, publishers, and for consumers --than contextual advertising," said Marla R. Schimke, VP of marketing at Revenue Science, in a statement. "This study also reaffirms our belief that Internet users favor advertising relevant to them personally and that advertisers should employ behavioral targeting campaigns to maximize their return on investment."
Source:Information Week

It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World

In a recent survey CNET asked AOL, Ask.com, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo about their privacy policies and behavioral targeting. In some cases they asked follow-up questions for clarification.

Here are the results



Source: http://news.com.com/How+search+engines+rate+on+privacy/2100-1029_3-6202068.html

So what did the Search engines say about Behavioral Targeting?

AOL was very open about using Behavioral Targeting. They have been using Revenue Science and recently purchased Revenue Science’s competitor Tacoda.

ASK said they do not use behavioral targeting. I have not paid much attention to ASK so I cannot comment if that is true or not.

ASK said they do not use behavioral targeting. I have not paid attention to ask so cannot comment if that is true or not.
Google said they do not use behavioral targeting. However as I showed you last month, they use same session targeting, I call it behavioral targeting. Their following answers were not clear to me

"CNET: Do you do behavioral targeting, meaning showing ads to users based on their behavior across multiple queries?
Grand: We are committed to protecting user privacy. We also want to provide users with a more rewarding online experience by making the advertising and content users see relevant to them. We believe the targeting capabilities, reporting and analytics we offer today provide advertisers with an excellent ROI and provide a high-quality user experience. Currently, our system incorporates a large number of signals (such as the user's query, the user's location, type of site, content, and the advertiser's landing page) when targeting and ranking ads. We have not focused on demographic targeting to date for targeting ads on search result pages."

Isn’t that what is called behavioral targeting? Demographic is one element and is not the main ingredient for Behavioral Targeting, Behavioral Targeting is based on behavior, demographic provides another criteria to segment the behavior by but is not required. Once again, do not confuse Behavioral Targeting with targeting based on Demographic information. Seems like Google is saying since we do not use Demograohic information we are not doing Behavioral Targeting.

"CNET: We weren't able to figure out your answer to our question asking whether you do behavioral targeting. In other words, if I search for "New York City vacation" in one query and "vacation hotels" in a second query a moment later, does Google.com evaluate the two responses, figure out that I'm probably looking for New York City hotels, and display ads appropriately?
Grand (Google): No.
Well, I showed some examples of it last month, check out my article titled "Ad Targeting on Google Search Engine".

MSN: Representative of MSN said that they offer Behavioral Targeting through AdCenter. He indicated that they will begin offering behavioral ad targeting on third-party sites. He also said that MSN uses some demographic data from services such as Hotmail and Windows Live for targeting but uses in non-identifiable fashion."

Yahoo, was very open about using behavioral targeting. According to yahoo
"Per our privacy policy, when a user is logged into a Yahoo product or service, they are not anonymous to us. Logged-in users may receive customized ads based on general demographic categories such as geo-location, gender, and/or age range."

What does this all mean?

Well, Behavioral Targeting has arrived, you will be targeted (and already are weather you know it or not). Yahoo, MSN and AOL are doing it. Google, even if they are denying it, is already targeting you. ASK will follow suite soon. "It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World".