Web Analytics For 404 Errors

404 errors are a fact of life on the internet. 404 error is a message returned by a server in response to a request for a page that does not exist on the server (http 404 error code).

Let me illustrate this with an example:

A visitor comes to a site, bookmarks a page and then leaves the site.
Next week the owner of the site decides to launch a new site completely replacing the old pages with the new pages (urls were different).
Next month the visitor comes back to the site via the bookmark but the page she bookmarked does not exist as it was removed during the site redesign.
She will get a 404 error message from the server.


Reasons for 404 Errors

404 errors can occur due to numerous reasons:

1. Misspelled links – A misspelled URL in a hyperlink on the site can causing a broken link and hence a 404 error message.
2. Bad Site Map – A site map is an xml file containing a list of all the pages on the site. It is usually meant for the search engines to index the pages on a site. A misspelling in a site map can cause the search engines to look for the pages that do exist on the server. Generally theses pages (broken links) won’t be visible to the visitors but they will show up in the search engines indexing report such as the Google webmaster tools. Some sites also show the site maps to the visitors as a form of site navigation; in those cases the visitors will see the 404 errors.
3. Site Redesign – Site redesigns are a leading cause of the missing pages. Site owners redesign the sites, completely replacing the old pages without thoroughly thinking about the pages that might have been linked all over the web, indexed by the search engines, bookmarked by the visitors etc. Visitors who clicks on old links, bookmark etc. are greeted with the 404 error messages when they click on those links to arrive on the site.
4. Sever Unavailable – 404 error messages can also occur when the server is unavailable.

Below is an example of a standard 404 error message

If standard 404 error page is the first page that a visitor sees when she arrive on a site, what will her reaction? As shown in the picture above, you can’t even tell which site this page belongs to. It is a dead end. Visitors don’t know where to go. What would a visitor do in this situation? She will most likely leave the site. She will go back to where she came from. The site has just failed to engage her.

Let’s imagine a similar situation in the offline world. Think about how you would feel if you enter a local supermarket looking for a toothbrush and are immediately taken to the location in the store where the toothbrushes aisle is suppose to be. When you arrive at that location, not only that you don’t find the aisle because the supermarket recently rearranged the store and move the aisle but also that the whole supermarket goes dark and all you see is the exit door. You will, for sure, run towards the exit door. That’s what a standard 404 error pages does, the site goes dark and the only thing a visitors sees is the back button or the close button on the browser.

Custom 404 Error Pages

Now imagine that instead of the store going dark, the customer sees a friendly associate who politely says “Sorry, we recently rearranged our store and the aisle you are looking for have been moved. May I show you the new location of the aisle” (or some flavor of it). Friendly associate on the web in this situation is called “Custom 404 error page (message)”, which will say “Sorry the page you are looking for does not exists anymore or has been moved, here are few links that might help you” (or some flavor of it).
A custom 404 error page allows the site to provide a message other than a generic server error message (Figure 1). A custom 404 is an opportunity for the sites to engage the visitors whom they might have lost otherwise.

How do you create a custom 404 error page?

Create a page with a message that you want your visitors to see when they encounter 404 error messages and save it as 404.html (you can use other names and the page extensions as well). Web servers have a setting which allows you to set the page that you want the visitors to see when they encounter the 404 errors. In this case you might set it to 404.html. (Contact your IT department or hosting companies to get further details).

Here is an example of a custom 404 error page

There are several ways to customize your 404 error page. Be creative when designing the 404 page, this is your last chance to reengage a visitors. (I will show you some more examples in a future post)

Web Analytics and 404 error page

Another benefit of creating a custom 404 page is that you can put your web analytics tag on the page to report and analyze the 404 pages. Web Analytics reports can show you the pages (links) that are causing 404 error messages on your site. You can also find out which pages have the bad links, what keywords, external links etc. are driving users to those non-existent pages.

Tracking 404 pages in Web Analytics

Here is an example of Google Analytics Code to track the 404 pages

This code appends “404:” in front of the page name that triggers the 404 error so that it is easy for me to filter the Google Analytics reports for the 404 error pages.

The same concept can be used in the other web analytics tools such as Omniture, Webtrends, Unica, Coremetrics etc.

There are two reports that I frequently use to analyze the 404 pages

1. Top Content
   
   
   
   Since I prefixed my 404 pages with “404:”, I can easily filter out the 404 pages in this report. This report gives me all the pages that are triggering 404 error messages. This report also shows me how big the problem is and if I am losing visitors on these pages or not.
   If your custom 404 page is unable to engage the visitors (high exit rate or bounce rate) then you should consider changing the content/design etc. of the page. (I am looking into how you can conduct A/B testing on a 404 page).
   
   You can also drill down into each of the page and do further navigational analysis to see the pages that the visitors saw before they got the 404 error page.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   This leads you to the pages that have old/misspelled links. To track down the external links and sources, that have bad links to your site, you will need to look at the top landing pages report.
   
2. Top Landing Pages
   
   
   
   
   A filter on “404:” in this report will show you the landing pages that result in the 404 errors. Use this report to drill down to the external sources of errors e.g. the external links, keywords etc. Below is an example of a report that shows that most of the 404 for a page on this site occurred from links in the emails.
   
   
   
   
   Further analysis of the emails led me to the malfunction links.
   

Do you have 404 error messages stories, examples to share? Send them to me.

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How intelligent are your Toll Free Numbers, Landing Pages and Promotional Codes?

Sending a toll free number (800, 866, 877 etc.), links to special landing pages, micros sites or promotion codes in the print material or email is a common practice. However before you send that promotion to your customers, make sure it can be tied back to campaign and the offer that you sent. Make sure your site, automated phone system and customer service reps. know what those special promo codes or toll free numbers mean. Do not waste your customer and your own time.

The point of that promotion is to grab customer’s attention and get share you their wallet. When a customer takes action on the offer that she just received, the customer expects that the web page/site or the human answering that call is intelligent enough to provide information on that offer and help her convert. I am however amazed how often this minor detail is totally missed due to lack of communication between marketing, sales and customer support.

I recently received a direct mail from Comcast “Free DVR for 1 tear and 1 year installation”. I called the 866 number listed on the mailer. To my disappointment, I was greeted with a standard recorded message that had nothing to do with the mailer I received. The system asked me some standard information to identify me but I did not hear an option that was even remotely related to what was mentioned on the letter.

So what was I suppose to do, which option should I have selected? I did nothing. The message repeated itself and then finally it (automated system) transferred me to a human representative.

Human representative made the same mistake as did the recorded message. She asked me how she can help me. I told her about the mailer I received and was calling about it. She goes "Great ! I can get that to you for free and there will be $14.99 charge for installation". I reminded her that my offer also said that I will get free installation. She asked me to be on hold for few minutes while she checked the offer I might have received.

She came back and gave me free installation because apparently the mailer I received had the code for free installation. I was not able to locate any code on my mailing but it seemed like there was some database she could go back check about my offer.
As a consumer, I was a little disappointed with this experience. I am enjoying my free DVR service though.

Even though this is an example of the toll free number, the same principal applies to web. If you do send out that special landing page or promo code make sure it provides the customers with relevant information and take them into easy conversion path. Do not waste their time. If you do provide a toll free number on that landing page, make sure you customer service/sales reps know the offer that those toll free numbers belong to. Customer is ready to be converted, don’t waste their time, just do it (convert them).

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Twitter Analytics

There is a lot of discussion recently about how to measure authority, influence etc. on Twitter. There are a lot of tools popping up which claim to give some kind of score to help you measure you (or anyone else) against everybody else. This post is not about those tools and which ones I like (more on that later). This post is about things that we can track for sure.

There are millions of Twitter users who are tweeting every day, hoping and assuming that there tweets are being read by their followers. We can’t track all tweets and find out if they are being read but if you are one of those who post a link in your tweets then you are in luck. This post will show you how to track URLs posted in your tweets so that you can determine for sure if anybody is reading those tweets and also what kind of tweets from you are getting the most attention.

There are two types of URLs you post in Twitter

1. URL to your site
   
2. URLs to third party sites

1. URLs to you site – When you post a link to your site on twitter, you can treat it as a campaign just like a banner or search campaign. Add the campaign tracking codes compliant with your web analytics tool so that you can see the visits, page views, conversions and other web analytics data when a visitors clicks on your tweeted link and arrives on your site.
   
   Example:
   
   I use Google Analytics (GA) and you wanted to post a link to http://AnilBatra.com/, instead of just posting http://AnilBatra.com/ in my tweets, I add GA campaign parameters to the URL being posted.
   utm_campaign, utm_medium and utm_source are three query parameters that GA uses for campaign tracking.
   
   Link to Be Tweeted: http://AnilBatra.com
   
   Adding GA Parameters: http://AnilBatra.com/?utm_campaign=watweets&tum_medium=twitter&utm_source=011909tweet
   
   Now when I use WebTrends for Web Analytics then I use something like
   
   Adding WebTrends Paramater: http://AnilBatra.com/?wt.mc_id=011909tweet. Where WT.mc_id is the Webtrends campaign tracking paramter.
   You can use which ever web analytics tool you like, the key is adding the campaign tracking parameters the URL to be tweeted. It is that simple.
   



2. URLs to third party sites– Quite often tweeters post links to sites for which they don’t have access to the web analytics reports. For example, you posting a link to my blog http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/, you don’t have access to my Web Analytics Reports. As a results you have no idea how many people click though to the link that you tweeted.
   For such tracking I like a utility called CLIGS http://cli.gs (Note: I have no affiliate with this tool). This tool creates a short URL for any URL that you want to tweet. It than also provides you the clicks on that links as well as other stats such as
   
   • Geo Locations of visitors
   
   
   • Social media monitoring Cligs keeps track in real time of who tweets your link, who shares it on Friendfeed, who links to it, who blogs about it, who writes a blog comment about it, and more. Not just that, Cligs does that for the destination URL too!
     

For the sites that I have access to the web analytics data, I create a tracking url as I showed above (1) and then use CLIGS to shorten the URL (2), this provides me both CLIGS and Web Analytics data for analysis.

Apart from tracking on links the other ways to determine if your tweets are getting attention is to see the number of Retweets you get, direct messages and @replies you get. I will cover those in my future blog post.

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5 Best Practices for any Campaign

Burger King recently launched a TV ad that directed visitors to WhopperVirgins.com. I learned about this on AdAge.com which wote:

“What if you don't remember the exact Web address and Google it? You still better remember the domain name. While WhopperVirgins.com ranks first in Google for "whopper virgins," it's invisible when you omit the plural. “

AdAge writes further:

”This is a major missed opportunity. Google Trends shows that recently, the volume of searches for the singular and plural versions have been nearly equal. "Whopper virgin" searchers must either go to an intermediary site or refine their search. Why can't consumers 'have it their way' and get to Burger King's site even if they're off by a letter? This multimillion-dollar branding campaign could have covered all its bases with a $10,000 search marketing investment. As it stands now, Burger King risks frustrating consumers instead of serving up one whopper of a video.”

AdAge listed following three areas of neglect:

• The domain: WhopperVirgin.com is a parked domain filled with ads for Burger King store listings, Virgin Mobile gifts, Virgin Atlantic flights, Virgin Islands vacations and Virgin Mary checks.


• Search engine optimization: The microsite doesn't appear on the first three pages of Google results for "whopper virgin" searches.


• Paid search: While reviewing Google's listings over several days, there hasn't been a search ad running on "whopper virgin" queries.

In addition to above another area which was partially neglected by Burger King was Web Analytics. I found two main issues with the web analytics

1. Web Analytics Tool Implementation - This site did not have any web analytics code implemented on the landing page. However the video does start as soon as user lands on the site which then fires WebTrends code. With this implementation I am not sure if they are getting an referring site or search engine information.


2. Data Analysis - Clearly Burger King is using web analytics tool. I am sure they were passing the web analytics reports around but I am assume that they were not doing any meaningful analysis. If they were doing any analysis at all they would have uncovered the SEO/SEM issues listed by AdAge.

Simple keyword analysis using their web analytics tool would have helped them uncover these issues. (Lesson: If you are spending millions of dollars on the campaign you should also keep aside few thousands for deeper analysis. Just passing the reports around is not enough).
It is very common to report on top 10 -20 keywords but these keywords alone don’t tell the whole story. Yes they can be good ego boosters but you have to look beyond top keywords and analyze the keyword that are either in the long tail or are not driving any traffic at all. Doing some basic analysis on search engine keywords would have shown them that they were not getting any traffic (or are getting very little traffic) from “Whopper Virgin” or “Burger King Virgin” keywords (I am sure there are more variations).

I hope Burger King learned its lesson and will be smarter next time they run campaign. (Note: All campaigns, offline or online end up having an impact on the site, search engines and online media)

Below are the 5 lessons that all marketers can learn from Burger King Campaign and apply to their own campaigns in the future:

1. Search Engine Optimization - Make SEO an Integral Part of your any micro-sites and campaigns (offline or online).


2. Paid Search - Plan to spend few thousand dollars from your campaign budget to SEM to augment or fill any gaps in SEO.


3. Web Analytics Tool Implementation - Plan to spend few thousand dollars from your campaign on Web analytics tools (which they did). Make sure the tool is properly configured to capture the accurate data. As I mentioned above, it appeared that the site did not have any code on the landing page, which means they were missing a lot of data and hence not getting the whole picture. Conduct an accuracy audit of the tool implementation; it can potentially save you millions of dollars by providing you data beyond click-throughs.


4. Data Analysis – Analysis is different from reporting. Web Analytics tools and SEM reports just provide you a view into the data. You have to conduct a full analysis to understand what the data means and what actions to take to generate a higher ROI from your campaigns. Plan to conduct an analysis on all the data you collect from various tools. Learn from this analysis, it will tell you where you are wasting your money and what’s working for you. Use the insights gained from the analysis and take appropriate actions to improve your campaigns.


5. Online Reputation Monitoring - Monitor news sites, Social Media (conversations/actions that happen away from your site) etc., look at what people are talking about your campaign and your brand. Learn from it and take appropriate actions. A simple tool like Google Alert can provide this to you this for free. I believe Burger King did pay attention to what was being talked about and as a result now you can see Burger King’s Paid Search campaign for “Whopper Virgin” and “Burger King Virgin” keywords.

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Social Networking Sites and Advertising

Social Networking sites are used by millions of people around the work and thousands of new users are jumping on social networking sites every day. Almost all of these social networking sites and new entrants are dependent on the advertising to generate the revenue to keep them going. However, a study by BurstMedia shows that consumers have a very low tolerance for online ads.

52.6% of those surveyed accepted that advertising will appear on a web page but they had very low tolerance for more than 2 advertising units per web page. 29.9% of survey respondents said that they will leave the site immediately if they perceived it cluttered. Women are more likely than men to abandon the site. (Have lots of ads on the site and can’t figure out why people are abandoning, this might be a reason, time to do some testing)

It is not only the publishers who are negatively affected by the ad clutter but also are the advertiser’s products and services. 52.4% respondents has a less favorable opinion of an advertiser when their advertising appears on a web page they perceive as cluttered.

A study by IDC shows that the users are less tolerant of Social Networking Services (SNS) advertising than other forms of online advertising. Ads on SNS have lower click-through rates than traditional online ads (on the Web at large, 79% of all users clicked on at least one ad in the past year, whereas only 57% of SNS users did), and they also lead to fewer purchases (Web: 23%; SNS 11%).


Lack of ad effectiveness and slowing economy is making marketers cut their spending on Social Networking sites.

Market research firm eMarketer has cut Social Network ad spending estimate for 2009 to $1.3 billion down from $1.8 billion it projected earlier. It has also lowered 2008 estimated from $1.2 billion from $1.4 billion.



"As consumer usage of social networking sites continues to flourish, advertising has not kept pace," a release from eMarketer explained. "In 2008 and 2009, the recession will affect all forms of online ad spending, but experimental formats, such as the ones available on social networks, which cannot always demonstrate a proven return on investment, will be hit particularly hard."

So what should Social Networking sites do? Charge customers for the using the site? Nope, that is not going to work either. A recent AdAge study showed that no matter how much consumers hate advertising but they are not even going to pay for their favorite sites.

According to IDC Lower-than-average ad effectiveness on SNS will continue to contribute to slow ad sales unless publishers get users to do something beyond just communicating with others. If the major services succeed in doing so, they will become more like portals, such as Yahoo! or MSN, and they will come closer to the audience reach of the top services. If that happened, publishers would be better able to monetize their SNS.

Side Note:

eMarketer has also cut its overall online ad spending estimates

It reduced 2008 to $23.6 billion from its August estimate of $24.9 billion. The online ad growth is still increasing and is expected to be 11.3 percent higher than 2007. In 2009 this increase will be 8.9 percent over 2008.
Hardest hit is the display advertising, for which the growth rate estimate was cut from 16.9 percent to 3.9 percent. Search ads are expected to grow at 21.4 percent in 2008, its lowest level so far. Next year the search-ad growth rate should be at 14.9 percent, the company predicted, dropping to 10.4 percent in 2013.

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Facebook lost my Email Notification settings

I got an email this morning from Facebook that they have lost my email notification settings. I did not believe that email, I thought it was a phishing email. I checked the url in the email and it seemed valid but for some reason I still could not believe it. “How can Facebook lose my email notifications? Not possible” I thought.




I logged into Facebook and found the same message on the home page. So, the email was legit and Facebook had indeed lost my email preferences.



It is very concerning to me. How can a company like Facebook lose data? Millions of people put a lot of data on Facebook and how can Facebook not keep proper safeguard to make sure data does not get lost and proper backups to restore the data. It is not clear if a programming error or human error cleared all the data or did somebody break into the database/file system and cleared it out. I am not sure if it was just me or others got affected as well?

Did you receive similar message from Facebook?

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Motrin Ad Controversy - Who Gained from it?

Last week there was a lot of uproar in the social media space about a Motrin Ad that caused Motrin to pull the ad within 2 days of launching it and post an apology on their site. Judging by this and the negative press it got, it seemed like a failure. However, in my last post I outlined few key measures to see if the ad was a success or a failure.

As I expected, Motrin site saw a huge increase in traffic on its site. According to Compete Pro Motrin’s site saw a 10X increase in its Daily Reach on the Web, jumping from .002% to .02% in one day. That is a huge. An ad without a controversy would have not generated that kind of traffic. Motrin should send a big thank you and some motrins to #motrinmoms , a twitter group that started this whole controversy.


Source: Compete Pro

Note: 15th evening is when the ad went live and by 17th evening they pulled the ad and posted an apology.

#motrinmoms, you were successful too because you got the ad pulled out and got an apology. Now go take some motrin to ease the pain caused by this ad, don’t forget to print a coupon at Motrin.

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Was Motrin’s Baby Wearing Ad a Failure?

Last week, Johnson & Johnson’s video ad for Motrin caused a lot of uproar in the media. There were a few moms, dads and media upset with this ad and voiced their opinions on blogs, twitter and other social media. But there were also many who voiced their opinion on the social media and said they did not see any issue with the ad. It was amazing to see how the negative voice of few people carried such a huge weight (as it does most of the time) that Motrin was forced to remove the ad and post an apology on the home page of Motrin.com.



So should we say that this ad was a failure? It sure does seem like it, doesn’t it?
However, in my opinion, there are several ways to look at it. Let’s look at various KPIs and see if the Motrin ad was a success or failure.

1. Number of Video Views – I think this was huge, way more than Motrin or their agency ever imagined. If Motrin calculates the percentage increase in actual v/s anticipated video views of this Ad then I am pretty sure they will find it that this ad was a huge success. (Related Post, Video Analytics)




2. Buzz created – Huge. A lot of buzz was created. The blogosphere, Twitter, Social Media, TV, Newspapers - everybody was talking about it. Honestly, I never even considered Motrin when I was looking for pain killers, but now I know it is another option made by Johnson and Johnson. Also, some people have told me why Motrin might be better than the other pain killers I have been taking.




3. Buzz Sentiment – Yes, there was a lot of negative press about this ad that forced the ad out (there were a lot of positive sentiments as well) . I am not sure if opinions about an ad from Motrin would really impact Motrin’s brand image that much. A lot of people I talked to did not view this ad negatively, but also did not voice their opinion in any social media so their sentiments were not taken into account. Yes, all sentiment measures will show an issue, but is there really an issue with the product or was the issue just with an ad? If you just look at the buzz sentiment in isolation then this ad appears as a failure.




4. Brand Awareness – A lot of people, like me, who never even considered the Motrin brand before, became aware of it. I think this is a huge positive.




5. Change in visits to the site from pre-video launch- I am sure it was a great success. I am sure a lot of people went to the site to see what all the fuss was about and to read the apology by Motrin. The apology got the blogosphere and social media world buzzing again driving even more traffic to Motrin’s site.




6. Change in Motrin Sales – This will really tell us if the ad and this backlash had any negative (or positive) impact in Motrin or not. As I asked above, was the backlash against Motrin, or just against the ad? If it was the ad then they apologized and took the ad away. The product “Motrin” did not have any negatives attached to it. As mentioned above, a lot of people might have to gone to the site. If you look on Motrin’s site there is a link on the top called “Special Offers”. You click on that link and get a coupon with the option to forward the page to a friend. I am sure that this increase in traffic would have resulted in an increase in coupons being printed and forwarded to a friend. This in return will possibly drive more sales. This seems like a success for Motrin.

In the future when Motrin comes up with a new ad they’re automatically going to get some additional coverage. I think that also makes the Baby Wearing ad a success. Free publicity; what more can you ask for?

So what do you think was it a success or a failure?


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Market and Optimize Responsibly

We, the people in the business of marketing and optimization, know (I hope) that certain images, text, ad copy etc. work better than others in driving user to convert on our sites. We continuously test (A/B and Mult-variate) to see what works and what does not work for our visitors/customer on our sites and then optimize our sites/banners/emails etc. accordingly. In order to make users click we test headlines, text, testimonials etc. making certain claims about our services, and products in those headlines, ad copies, emails etc.

In making those claims we need to think responsibly. We need to make sure that we do not go over broad and make false claims, promises or exaggerate the results. Yes, those claims might give you higher click through rates and higher conversions but there is one more KPI that you need to keep in mind i.e. the KPI that measures responsibility (both ethical and legal). We need to all think ethically and legally about all the claims we make. Think about how we will feel if another company made such claims and we fall for it, will we feel cheated or not? Think about the potential of lawsuits.

Classmates.com is being sued for allegedly making false claims in their email. According to Media Post

“The plaintiff, Anthony Michaels of San Diego county, alleges that he signed up for a free membership to the site last Christmas Eve, but then upgraded to a paid one after receiving e-mail ads stating that other schoolmates were trying to contact him. Those statements turned out to be false, according to the lawsuit.
Michaels' lawyer, Brian Kabateck, said his client had no way of verifying whether his former schoolmates were actually seeking to contact him on the site, short of signing up for a one-year membership.
"The e-mail said: 'So and so's trying to find you, and in order to hook up with him you have to join and become a gold member,'"

Media Post further reports that Reunion.com also faces a lawsuit by members complaining about the site's marketing efforts. In that case, filed in federal district court in San Francisco, the members allege that Reunion.com sent e-mails that appeared to have come from specific friends, but were actually sent by the site.

We might (or might now) find out if the claims by classmates were false or not. Either way this lawsuit provides a great lesson for the marketers - Market and Optimize Responsibly.

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Relevancy Matters in Email Marketing

Let's begin with a profile of a customer who received an email from a large retailer.

Name: John S
Site: MeetJohnSong.com
Gender: Male
Age Range: 40 -50
Relationship: Married
Location: Seattle, WA
Profession: Executive in an Interactive and Technology Company
Hobbies: Golf, Madden 09,
Shopping Habits: Shops at Nordstorms.com, mostly interested in shoes and have borught a lot of them from Nordstorm.com. Also buys shirts, trousers and other male clothing items. Loyal customer at Nordstrom.com and Nordstrom for many years. Has an account online and login quite often when browsing.

From what it sounds like he is a perfect customer for any male clothing items that Nordstorm wants to sell. He will be very keen to look at Nordstrom promotions. He has opted-in for an email from Nordstrom.

Last week, John and I were talking about e-retailers, targeting (in particular Behavioral Targeting), personalization and product recommendations online. During our discussion he said “you have to see an email that I received from Nordstorm”. He forwarded me the email which is shown below:




Now my questions to Nordstrom or other etailers who are sending similar emails is, “Why would you do that?” You have so much information on your customers (John in this case) why not use that information to power your emails?

John was not annoyed with Nordstrom for this email(he is a huge fan of Nordstrom. Good for the brand.) but he was disappointed. He would probably have bought something if Nordstrom had sent something relevant to him in that email.

Here is a customer waiting to convert and you are disappointing him with irrelevant emails? Why?

Don't you want happy customers who are ready to open their wallet and give you money? Don’t waste your and his time with irrelevant emails send them relevant emails.

Here are few ways to create relevancy in emails

1. Use his browsing history to look at what has been looking at but has not bought yet – Target the correct promotion
2. Use his past email click-though behavior to determine what might interest him
3. Use his checkout funnel abandonment history to determine what to send in an email
4. Use his past purchase history and make proper recommendations
5. Use the frequency and recency of his visits to the site to determine when to send him a coupon and type of promotion
6. If you do feel you have to send something unrelated to persons interest (e.g. provide him an opportunity to see what else you sell maybe lure him into buying something he might not have considered) then send it along with something relevant to him. E.g. send discount on women apparel along with some discount for men stuff
7. If you don’t have anything relevant to send then don’t send an email. Consumers are bombarded with irrelevant emails every day, you need to stand out and make your email count so don’t send anything irrelevant

Sending relevant emails is not rocket science. Most of the email tools/services have a way to send highly customized emails. You just have to explore them.

Do you have examples of irrelevant emails or relevant emails that you would like to share? Send them to me.

Comments? Questions?

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Multichannel Marketing: Book Review

We live in a multi-channel world today. Customers are everywhere Online, Print, Mobile, Email, TV etc. Marketing efforts in one channel have an impact on the other channels. Customers interact with various channels before they take the final action i.e. to buy from you.

Mutli-channel customer behavior poses a problem for marketers who need to analyze impact of various marketing efforts and decide how to allocate their budget. It is one of the biggest challenges that face the marketers today. Akin Arikan provides a very practical approach to Multi-channel marketing measurement and optimization in his book Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and for On and Offline Success.

This book shows how to effectively measure and optimize the multi-channel marketing efforts using web analytics. Akin looks at multichannel measurement methods from web analysts, brand marketer and direct marketers point of view. He then takes these various methods to create cross channel analytics.

I highly recommend this book to all the marketers and web analysts. Great Job Akin!

Have you read this book? What do you think? Chime-in.

Here is a list of other books that web analysts recommend.

Online Data Tracking and Privacy

Online privacy is a hot button these days. Privacy advocates and lawmakers are putting a lot of pressure on several large internet companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to be transparent about how they intend to use users web surfing data (behavior). Mainly they are concerned with the companies that collect a huge amount of user data and then engage in Behavioral Targeting.

However online data tracking is not limited to companies who engage in Behavioral Targeting. Any companies which collects users’ web surfing data or user provided data needs to make sure do not compromise user privacy (actual or perceived). They need to clearly state how they are collecting data and how that data will be used.
Enterprise web analytics tools like Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics etc and free tools like Google Analytics and Yahoo IndexTools have made it very easy for website owners of any size to track users’ online behaviors. Most of the web analytics tools use a first party anonymous cookie to track users and their behaviors on any given site.

Side Note: The data is called anonymous because it mainly uses a cookie value to indentify a user (there are other ways which I am not covering in this post) without knowing who the actual user is. Say John Doe arrives on AnilBatra.com, a web analytics tool will drop a cookie with a random id say 123ASXBA12. This cookie id is not tied to any personally identifiable information (see below) of John Doe. So Web Analytics tools (in most cases) do not know who the person is, they just know that cookie id 123ASXBA12 came to the site. They use this id to track current and future site visits.

Even if the data is anonymous the potential of it being tied to personally identifiable information is there and that can cause privacy concerns. It is critical that every company that collects any sort of consumer data, anonymous or personal, needs to clearly state its data collection and usage policy in its site’s privacy policy.

Usually Web Analysts do not tackle this issue and it is left to the legal department. However, a lot of times the web analytics tracking and any kind of targeting is implemented without getting legal involved. As a result companies sometimes do not have proper privacy policy in place. This is a huge blunder, companies need to take privacy issues seriously and pay due attention to their privacy policy.

Do we need Privacy policy even though we use Third Party Web Analytics Tool and they collect the data.

It does not matter who is collecting the data. The data is collected on your site and is collected on your behalf so you are responsible for clearly stating how you are collecting and using the data.
Those who use Google Analytics, need to be aware that Google Analytics requires such disclosures. Here is what Google Analytics states in its Terms of Service

You will have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy and will comply with all applicable laws relating to the collection of information from visitors to Your websites. You must post a privacy policy and that policy must provide notice of your use of a cookie that collects anonymous traffic data.

Tracking Personally Identifiable Data

In simple terms Personally Identifiable Information (PII) can identify a particular user, example last name, first name, email address etc. Most of the commercial Web Analytics Tools have the capability to track Personally Identifiable Information. In other tools such as Omniture, Webtrends etc. you can pass the personally identifiable information either via JavaScript variables or via importing an outside file which ties the anonymous cookie with identifiable information.
If you collect or track PII data then it becomes even more important that you disclose what information you are collecting or tracking and how you intend to use that information. Before you start collecting PII information, think hard what information you need and why you need it. Once you have figure out the information then make sure to fully disclose it on your site’s privacy policy.
I am a big supporter of giving users an opt-in option before using PII data for tracking and targeting. If you do decide that opt-in is not the right for your business model then at least provide an easy way for users to opt-out from being tracked and targeted using PII information.

Note: Google Analytics does not allow any Personally Identifiable information to be tracked via Google Analytics, period. Here is what Google Analytics Terms of Service says:

You will not (and will not allow any third party to) use the Service to track or collect personally identifiable information of Internet users, nor will You (or will You allow any third party to) associate any data gathered from Your website(s) (or such third parties' website(s)) with any personally identifying information from any source as part of Your use (or such third parties' use) of the Service.

Google Analytics even considers IP address as PII. It uses IP address to populate Geo Report but will not show IP address in any report. Other tools such as Omniture, WebTrends etc. can display IP and other PII data.

Optimization and Privacy

Most of the Optimization (A/B and Multivariate Testing) tools allow you to segment users based on IP, cookie or user provided data. For examples if you want to test a page on Males, age 35-45 from Redmond, WA, then you need to collect data from users so that you can create the right segment to test. However this type of data crosses the line of PII data, even though there could be thousands of users in that segment it can be used to identify a particular user. So make sure you are clear in your privacy policy that you might be (or are) using the data to test the optimal layout of the page and provide a better experience etc.

Examples of good privacy policies
Smart Money
Amazon.com
Proflowers.com

As marketers and web analysts lets do our part, let’s make sure to be clear and forthcoming in our privacy policies.


Also see Jim Stern’s view on giving users the control on privacy.

Questions? Comments?

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Consumer Attitude towards Behavioral Targeting

A recent report titled Behavioral Targeting Attitudes:The Privacy Issue by eMarketer, explored consumers attitude towards online tracking and behavioral targeting. There was a similar study by TRUSTe in April. This report builds on that study and few other surveys and provides an analysis of the consumers attitude toward Behavioral Targeting.

The conclusion of this report was exactly what I have been advocating. According to the report

online marketers might do well to develop transparent methods of letting the audience know when and how their Web history data will be used, the benefits they can receive in exchange for allowing it to be used and a clear, easy opt-in mechanism for informed consent.

I shared similar views in my post titles 5 Step Process to Ease Privacy Concerns Regarding Behavioral Targeting.

The key question this report tackles are

• What will encourage people to accept more ad targeting?


• Are consumer privacy concerns a deal breaker for
  behavioral targeting?


• How much transparency will marketers need to allay
  consumer concerns?


• Are all methods of behavioral targeting data collection equal?


• Will the government limit how online companies can use
  consumer data?

Some of the highlights of this report are

1. Over 87% of the respondents to TRUSTe survey said that at least three quarter of the online ads are irrelevant


2. 41% of the users are more willing to pay attention to personalized advertising


3. 75% of internet users are interested in receiving personalized ads


4. 59% of the respondents to Harris Interactive Poll responded that they are not comfortable with ads or content targeted to their personal interests based on their internet usage

The above findings create an interesting dilemma for marketers. Consumers want relevant ads but are not comfortable with being tracked. However, it also provides an opportunity for Behavioral Targeting companies to step up and innovate new ways to provide relevant ads while easing the concern about tracking.

Marketers and privacy officer’s need to keep in mind that the negative attitude towards tracking and targeting is not limited to Behavioral Ad networks such as Tacoda and Revenue Science etc but it also applies to content targeting and on-site targeting provided by tools such as Test&Target by Omniture, Optimost/Interwoven etc.

You can get the full report at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006407

Comments?


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Google Collecting Data on 3rd Party Sites to Target Ads on Google.com?

Is Google collecting data on the 3rd party sites to target Ads on Google.com? A user called "Discovery" on Search Engine Watch Forums reported that Google showed targeted ads (sponsored search results) on Google.com based on this user's behavior on 3rd party sites (Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy).

Here is what “Discovery” wrote:

“As far as I knew Google's PPC was strictly KW search based, then an odd thing happened yesterday.

Without going to Google I had visited Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy looking for a PC for a family member. After some research on these sites I decided I wanted to look at some comparison engines. I opened up a new browser window and went to Google, I did a search for "Comparison engines".

My results were very interesting.

Instead of a generic list of comparison engines touting to find the best prices for all products all the advertisements were related to PCs! Specifically HP PC's! I had not done a search on Google at any time for PCs, or on their shopping site.

Is Google using behavioral targeting already? I had heard there were announcements that this would happen with the acquisition of DoubleClick, but I have had no notice that it was in practice?

If it is being tested, how does this type of advertising effect the KW advertisements that are competing with it?”

So the question is “Is Google doing Behavioral Targeting on Search results using visitors behavior off the search engine?”

I have written quite few blog posts on this topic and have always believed that Google will get into Behavioral Targeting sooner or later.

It started “in-session” behavioral targeting on the Google search engine, which uses a user previous search query and combines with current query (both in same session) to provide sponsored results on the SERP (search engine results page).

This person noticed that Google was using more than search data to target sponsored results on Google SERP. The kind of behavioral targeting that this person is talking about can only happen if:

1. Companies such as Best Buy, Fry’s, etc share their data with Google and allow Google to tie the users behavioral data collected on their site with other data that Google collects about those users (using a common cookie or some other common identifier).
   For this kind of data sharing to happen, Google (or Doubleclick) code has to be implemented on the pages (or servers) on those sites. I did not find any code, but it is possible that the code is there because if these sites are doing online advertising using Doubleclick then they must be putting the code to measure the success of these online ads. However, I highly doubt that they will let Google (Doubleclick) use the data collected on their site to power Google Search results unless Google is using the data to put their ad in front of users. Think about this. Why would Best Buy allow Google to use its data and allow it to show Circuit City’s or some other competitor ad?


2. Google collects this data via a toolbar or some other application that tracks user across the sites and on search engines.
   This sounds like an option that might have been used to collect data, if Google really did do Behavioral Targeting. I am not sure if the user had a Google Toolbar installed. If the user did have a Google Toolbar, then Google could collect the data (and it does) and can use it anyway (debatable) (as long as they state so in their privacy policy). In this case, Google does not need to seek permission from Best Buy or Circuit City, because user, by installing the toolbar (and accepting the terms), is giving permission to Google to collect the data.
   

This brings up few more questions.

• Who owns the data? It is up for debate.


• Is it fair to Best Buy or Circuit City or any other site owners? That is a question that needs a bigger discussion.


• Does Google has power and scale to collect data across sites and do targeting? Absolutely.

Comments?

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Wal-Mart Enters Behavioral Targeting

Yahoo has signed a deal with Wal-Mart under which Yahoo will start selling display advertising on Wal-Mart.

Yahoo will use the behavioral data collected on Wal-Mart's website to better target the ads, a practice known as behavioral targeting. As I understand, Wal-mart will use yahoo for serving behaviorally targeted in-house ads (and products) and behaviorally targeted 3rd party ads.

Side note: I believe that in near future all of the eCommerce sites will have some version of on-site behavioral targeting. eTailers (Online retailers) cannot put generic messages and products in front of customer and expect the conversions to go up. They will have to understand what customers want (or need), where customers are in their purchase decision and put relevant messages and products in front of them (more on that later).

Wal-mart's latest foray into online classifieds (IMHO they should have built their own classifieds instead of using oodle.com) and now deal with Yahoo to sell targeted advertising is the beginning of a long list of offering that Wal-Mart will roll out as a part of their online strategy to compete with Amazon, eBay etc.

Amazon v/s Walmart.com

I am including this chart to show how traffic to Walmart.com compares to Amazon. It will be interesting to see how Amazon and Wal-Mart compare to each other after Wal-Mart moves forward with its online strategy and rolls out new offerings.

Note: Wal-Mart uses oodle.com to power its classifieds; the traffic Wal-Mart will get on its classifieds section is attributed to oodle.com and not to Wal-Mart, since the classifieds resides on oodle.com domain. Not a very smart move by Wal-Mart.





What do you think? Comments?

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5 Step Process to Ease Privacy Concerns Regarding Behavioral Targeting

According to an article in Reuters, Stanford Group Co., a financial services research group, concluded that Federal, state and consumer discomfort with Google Inc, Yahoo Inc and other companies tracking consumers' online behavior could slow the growth of Internet advertising.

"We think the growing government scrutiny is likely to make it easier for consumers to opt out of behavioral tracking, which in turn will reduce the number of web surfers that can be reached through behavioral advertising," the group said in a statement.
"The momentum toward disclosure/opt-out has negative implications for the rapid growth of online advertising," the group said.

I don’t completely agree with this the conclusion and statements made by Stanford Group Co. As I have written in past, any company that wants to engage in Behavioral Targeting needs to first build trust with the consumers before they start targeting them.
Perfect example is Amazon.com. Most of the Customers do not mind being tracked by Amazon because they trust Amazon, they know that Amazon is collecting the data and that data will be used to provide better experience on the site and also to provide customers with timely and relevant offers from Amazon.

Yes, I agree that in short run providing easy opt-out options will result in lower reach but in long run publishers, advertiser and networks will build a trust that will provide more value than the value lost by sacrificing reach.
In my opinion, the momentum towards privacy will increase over time. So rather than complaining it is time that networks and publishers (and even advertisers) start taking action to build trust with their customers (visitors).

I provided a 5 step process to ease privacy concerns related to Behavioral Targeting, online advertising or On-Site in my post titled “ Consumer Awareness and Attitudes about Behavioral Targeting, here are those 5 steps.

1. Build trust with your consumers


2. Educate them what Behavioral Targeting is and how you collect the data and use it


3. Provide them a compelling reason to allow you to collect their data


4. Build an opt-in model allowing users to control what data they want you to use


5. Give users a way to easily opt-out of Behavioral Targeting

Do you agree? Disagree? Question? Comments? Chime in.



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5 Steps to Successful Behavioral Targeting

If you are a reader of this blog then you know what Behavioral Targeting is and how it is the latest (not really) idea that everyone is embracing. Ad network, web analytics tool vendors, agencies etc. all now claim to have behavioral targeting capabilities. Weather they really have the behavioral targeting capabilities or not is a topic of another blog topic. Some other like Google do behavioral targeting but do not talk about it. (You can read my past blog posts on behavioral targeting http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/search/label/behavioral%20targeting)

For all those who want to get into Behavioral Targeting or have been involved with behavioral targeting but not seeing the results or just want to make sure they get the most out of their behavioral targeting efforts, I have put together my 5 step process for successful Behavioral Targeting. (I talked about these steps in detail in my session on Behavioral Targeting at eMetrics). These steps apply to both Behavioral Targeting via ad-networks and on-site behavioral targeting.

5 Steps to Successful Behavioral Targeting

• Define your goals for Behavioral Targeting


• Define your customer segments


• Define Success metrics


• Find the right tools/networks


• Create a culture of continuous Improvement

Define your goals for Behavioral Targeting

This is the first and very important part of your Behavioral Targeting strategy. It is no different than any other campaign that you run, however, it is often not paid due attention to. Unless you know what you want from the Behavioral Targeting you will not be successful or in other words you will always be successful but not the same way that you should be.

While defining your goals for Behavioral Targeting, think about things like why are you even thinking about Behavioral Targeting (BT), are you looking for short term short term ROI or do you have a long term plan, are you trying to engage BT for Branding or direct response, are you just looking to drive traffic, acquire new customer, retarget the customers who have already been to your site? Having clear goals in mind will help you define your customer segments, success measures and set the right expectations among all the stakeholders. It will also keep you vendors in check. Document your goals and make sure all the stakeholders agree on those.

Define Customer Segments

Once you have the understanding of the goal of you Behavioral targeting efforts, think about what customer segment you want reach. How will you define these customer segments? What characteristics or behavior make them the right target. Some of the segments might be very obvious if you have thoroughly thought about your goals and some might need more thinking. Reaching the right segment at the right time and at the right place is the promise of Behavioral Targeting but if your segments are not properly defined then you will not reach the right customers. Notice that I have not talked about any tool or network yet. You should define your segment before you talk about tools because you want the tool/network to work based on your goals and segments and not the other way around.

Define success metrics

Unless you know how to measure success you won’t know if Behavioral Targeting is really working for you. Think clearly about what success means to you? Is it number of visits or is it conversions or something in the middle. Unless you have a predefined action defined you will not know if you are reaching the right customer or not. Also think about ROI, why do you want to pay extra for BT campaigns or engage in on-site BT activities. The ROI model will help you predict the return you will can expect from Behavioral Targeting and if it is worth your time, effort and money. During this process you might find that Behavioral Targeting (based on your goals, segment and success criteria) is not right for you. If that’s the case then it is time to go back to step 1 and rethink why BT.

Find the right tools/networks

Once you are equipped with the goals, segments and the success measures you can make an intelligent decision about a choosing the right Behavioral Targeting vendor (tool or network). As I said above, make sure the tool/network is capable of delivering based on your goals and segments and not the other way around.

Create a culture of continuous Improvement

As you drive users via Behavioral Targeting, you need to make sure that the creative, landing pages and conversion paths are optimal. Even if you reach the right customer, if you ads, landing pages and conversion paths are not persuasive you will not uncover the full potential of behavioral targeting. Conduct A/B or Multivariate testing on ads, landing pages and conversion paths to create the optimal conversion path. Remember that optimization is an ongoing process, it gets better with time. You have to create a culture of continuous improvement. You will never get to 100% conversion but every little improvement can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Also check out my 5 steps for easing the privacy concerns with Behavioral targeting.

Questions? Comments?

ISP Based Behavioral Targeting under Fire

Last month I wrote about 3 British ISPs getting into Behavioral Targeting using technology from a company called Phorm. In my blog post, I raised my concerns about Privacy with this kind of Behavioral Targeting. I wrote “However, ISP based ad networks also pose a bigger privacy threat than traditional BT networks, …. Phorm promises the same level of anonymity but I still think that the chances of privacy leaks are more in an ISP based network than they are in a traditional BT network.

Phorm also says that consumers are in control, they can switch relevance 'off' or 'on' at any time at a site called Webwise.com, site that educates users on how ISP based advertising works.”
Well, according to TheRegister.co.uk BT (British Teleco) is under fire from its customer for illegal use of their data. According to the news BT used its customers’ data to test Behavioral Targeting offering, without the customers’ consent.

BT and Phorm maintain that no personally identifiable data was used in this test. They said "We conducted a very small scale technical test of a prototype advertising platform on one exchange in June 2007. The test was specifically conducted to evaluate the functional and technical performance of the platform.
"Absolutely no personally identifiable information was processed, stored or disclosed during this trial. As with all service providers, it is important for BT to ensure that, before any potential new technologies are employed, they are robust and fit for purpose."

In my first post on ISP based targeting, I raised a concern about ISPs collecting and using data without website owners permission. Echoing the same sentiments, some authorities on RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) have argued that ISPs would need permission from website owners to profile the content of their pages

As Behavioral Targeting become omnipresent, the question still remains “Who does the data belong to?

• Visitors (User or Customer)?


• Site Owner where data is collected


• Internet Service Provider (ISP)


• 3rd Party Behavioral Targeting network? Like Tacoda, Revenue Science etc.


• 3rd Part Ad servers? Some server ads on behalf of publisher or Behavioral Targeting networks


• 3rd party tools like toolbars etc.


• Government


• Anybody else?

In an interview for BBC, Sir Tim Berners-Lee said "I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached. My ISP doesn't control which websites I go to, it doesn't monitor which websites I go to."
He also said that his data and web history belonged to him.
He said "It's mine - you can't have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I'm getting in return."

Which means that the data belongs to the visitors. That also means that anybody engaging in targeting based on user behavior or user provided data should seek users permission before using their data to target. Use Opt-in model instead of opt-out currently used by Behavioral Targeting networks. This is exactly what I have been advocating too.

Now, I am not sure how all this will affect on-site behavioral targeting. The kind now Omniture is pushing with its “Test&Target” offering. I will write my views in a future post.

What do you think? Chime-in.

British ISPs get into Behavioral Targeting

According to Herald Tribune three major internet service providers in Britain (British Telecommunications, TalkTalk and Virgin Media) have jumped into the growing Behavioral Targeting and Online Advertising space.
Phorm , the company behind the BT technology, created an online advertising platform called the Open Internet Exchange. The company will use ISPs data to target right ads on the websites (publishers) participating in this network. These three providers, that represent two-thirds (66+%) of internet access market in Britain, have agreed to provide the customer’s surfing data to this internet exchange. The exchange will be open to any website that wants to join so smaller publishers will also be able to derive value from behavioral targeting.

ISP based BT has certain advantages compared to traditional (cookie based) BT Networks (e.g. Revenue Science, Tacoda, Blue Lithium etc.)

1. Reach - ISP based BT networks have a bigger reach (granted major ISP participate in it - the one by Phorm does have that reach) compared to the likes of Revenue Science and Tacoda. Even though Revenue Science and Tacoda claim to reach 60%+ internet users, I don’t think they do collect data on and target 60+% of internet users. With their partnerships with other ad servers, they might be capable of reaching 60% of internet users but that is to just to serve any ads not collect behavior and serve targeted ads. ISP on the other hand can collect data on all their users and hence show targeted ads.


2. Relevance – BT’s promise to provide relevant ads to the online visitors. Networks that work with large number of different kinds of sites (different verticals) can collect wide variety of user behavior data and accurately identify users segments. ISP based BT networks have the potential to collect much richer data (because of their reach) than any network like Revenue Science and Tacoda ever can. Revenue Science and Tacoda collect data on select sites (those that participate in the network) while ISP’s collect data on any site that is accessed by their customers. ISP can better understand their customers’ behaviors and hence serve more relevant ads than traditional BT networks.

Privacy Issues

However, ISP based ad networks also pose a bigger privacy threat than traditional BT networks, as I wrote in my post on NebuAd, another ISP based BT network. NebuAd, one of the first company to enter into ISP based advertising. NebuAd responded to my post and said that the data is anonymized so there is no issue of privacy. Phorm promises the same level of anonymity but I still think that the chances of privacy leaks are more in an ISP based network than they are in a traditional BT network.

Phorm also says that consumers are are in control, they can switch relevance 'off' or 'on' at any time at a site called Webwise.com, site that educates users on how ISP based advertising works. This is somewhat in line with what I predicted earlier this year, where I said:

Behavioral Targeting will continue to grow this year, however, there will be greater push for protecting consumer privacy. The privacy concerns will result in two things:

1. Clear instructions (or links) on Behaviorally Targeted Ads that will allow behaviorally targeted visitors to opt-out of Behaviorally Targeted advertising.


2. Opt-in system – Some networks (maybe new ones) will move towards opt-in rather than opt-out (I favor opt-in over opt-out as I wrote in past. So I am making this prediction that this year networks will pay attention to it). A new type of networks or services might come up which will allow users to be an active participant in BT and control who can use their online behavioral data and how they can use it.

Phorm is moving in the right direction by providing proper education (I mentioned the need for education in my post on Google and Doubleclick) and an opportunity to opt-out in an easy way. I think soon we will see the actual opt-out link on the ads served by Behavioral Targeting networks.

Comments?

How To Opt Out from Behavioral Targeting Networks

Behavioral Targeting has become the buzz words these days. Behavioral targeting Vendors are spreading like wildfire. It is become hard to keep up with all the vendors in the market and find out who is tracking your behavior.

Today visitors, when they visit a site participating in a behavioral targeting network, are automatically opted-in to Behavioral Targeting. The consent to participate in Behavioral Targeting is mentioned in privacy policy of the site, which most of the people don’t read (when was the last time you read privacy policy of a site), and also visitors do not have choice if they want to use the site.
Even though most of the time tracking is done anonymously, using a third party anonymous cookie, Behavioral Targeting has raised privacy concerns. Most of the time these privacy concerns are unfound but still there are chances when it they can become an issue.

To ease consumers concerns and give them control over their tracking, Network Advertising Initiate (NAI) has developed an Opt-out Tool. This tool allows consumers to see what Advertising networks have dropped cookie on their computer and hence are tracking their behavior. If a person does not want any network(s) to track his/her behavior the visitor can "opt out" of the network using this tool.
Opting out of a network does not mean a visitor will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which a visitor opted out will no longer deliver ads based on the visitor’s behavior and/or preferences.
One caveat is that opt-out (using this tool) is based on third party cookies. What that means is that third party cookies are dropped on a visitor’s computer from the networks that he/she opt-outs from. When the visitor visits a site that is part of the network, network code reads the cookies and if it finds an opt-out cookie on the computer then if does not track or show targeted (behavioral) ads. If the visitor deletes the cookie or uses a software which deletes the cookies then visitor will be automatically opted-in again and he/she will have to repeat the process of opting out.
I believe that NAI should push this initiative even further and allow consumers to opt-out directly from the ads that are being served based on behavioral data or from the sites where the data is being collected. I am predicting that this year we might see a push in that direction. I also believe there will be opt-in networks instead of opt-outs (I wrote about my proposed solution when discussingGoogle DoubleClick privacy concerns, networks that will allow more control to visitors and reward users for participating in these networks (something similar to MyPoints, which asked for your preferences and then emailed you offers or ads based on those preferences and then rewarded you for clicking on those email offers).
Here are the networks that are part of NAI (I will write about these networks in future articles).

aCerno
Advertising.com
AlmondNet
Atlas
DoubleClick
Revenue Science
Safecount
SpecificMEDIA
24/7 Real Media
[x+1] (formerly Poindexter Systems)
Yahoo! Ad Network
TACODA Audience Networks


Here is the screenshot of the tool.
To use the tool visit NAI Website.


I tested it on two computers and was surprised to find out that I did not have network cookies from DoubleClick and Yahoo ad networks on either of the computers. I don’t believe that. So I don’t think the tool is fully functional, I will test various network in few days and report back if I find anything odd. For now, I have left all my cookies as it is because I find the value in behaviorally targeted ads, I will only opt-out for testing purposes. When you guys try can you let me know if you are seeing the same thing?