User Data and Behavioral Targeting

One New York assemblyman, Richard L. Brodsky, has drafted a bill that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.
There are essentially two main things in this bill

1. Opt-out for anonymous user behavior: It will force Web sites to give consumers obvious ways to opt out of advertising based on their browsing history and Web actions.


2. Opt-in for using PII data : Users would also have to give explicit permission before these companies could link the anonymous searching and surfing data from around the Web to information like their name, address or phone number.

My prediction about Behavioral targeting and privacy is coming true. Earlier this year, in my yearly predictions I said that this is year we will see a greater push for consumer’s privacy.
Here is what 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:

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 types 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."

Use of customer’s data without their consent created an uproar in UK last week. In response to the mess created by Phorm and British telecom, Sir Tim Berners-Lee 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."

This is just the beginning; I think, we will see greater push for consumer privacy as consumers become educated about how their data is being used to target them. I think it is time for publishers and ad networks to be proactive about educating customers on how their data is being used and give them clear options to opt-out (or better opt-in) of any targeting.

I am big proponent of Behavioral Targeting and Personalization but it has to be with user’s consent.

Comments? Questions?

Widget Ads and Offsite Analytics

Earlier this year in my Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Predictions for this year, I wrote
"Offsite Analytics – With proliferation of Widgets and Rich Media ads a need to measure, understand and optimize the user interaction with widgets and Rich Media ads will become important. Web Analytics will include offsite measurements i.e. user interactions with widgets and Rich Media Ads"

Yesterday I came across an article on iMedia Connection that validates my thinking. The article talk about an The online widget Ad by Paramount Vantage to promote “The Kite Runner” a movie This ad unit (widget) allows users to interact and make a ticket purchase for the movie without leaving the widget i.e without going to advertiser’s site. As you read the article by Media Post, you will see that they (agency/advertiser) are measuring the interaction rate (not sure what exactly is considered interaction maybe number of visitors/visit who clicked inside the widget/to number of visitors/visit who saw it) and the conversion rate. According to the article: "The first trial campaign saw interaction rates at 14 percent compared with other online campaigns where 0.5 percent is considered successful."
They also say that ticket sales ticked up but did not say how much.

As ad units like these become common there will be a need to measure more than just interactions and conversions. There will be a need to measure where in the whole conversion process visitors dropped off, what they searched for (cities, zip code, times etc), what other pieces on the widget distracted them, need for A/B and Multivariate testing etc.

I also believe that it will become common to use Behavioral Targeting in these widgets. Let’s say a widget like this was promoted by Fandango and they were promoting tickets for several movies. Knowing the user past behavior they could put the ticket sales for the movie genre that fits the users past behavior instead of any random movie.

What do you think? Will ad units like this become common or this is just a fad? What about behavioral targeting within these ad units? Yes, I know privacy is one of the issues but that can easily be worked out, if the use the opt-in model, as I said in my predictions about Behavioral Targeting.

Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Predictions for 2008

Last year I made 5 predictions about Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting. I was pleased to find that all of them came true by the middle of the year.
Now it’s a New Year and time to make fresh prediction about Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting. So here are the 5 predictions for 2008

1. Offsite Analytics – With proliferation of Widgets and Rich Media ads a need to measure, understand and optimize the user interaction with widgets and Rich Media ads will become important. Web Analytics will include offsite measurements i.e. user interactions with widgets and Rich Media Ads


2. Google Analytics – Google Analytics will mature further and start taking customers from other analytics tools like Omniture, WebTrends, Clicktracks etc. The configuration will become little complicated (and hence need for Google Analytics Expertise will grow) and Google will also expose more APIs to allow companies to pull and merge different kinds of data with Web Analytics Data.


3. Mobile Analytics – Mobile sites and mobile advertisings gains momentum. Mobile Analytics will be become a requirement to understand how the sites and advertising is performing. Currently you can either use log files, WAP gateway logs if you are one of the mobile carriers (this is what I did back in 2001 -2002) or use services from Amethon. This year we will see more players in mobile Analytics. The reporting will become better than what has been offered to date.


4. Online and Offline Data Integration – A need for integrating offline data and web analytics data will become a priority. ZeroDash1 founders saw this need in the market and hence started this company. More companies will push in this direction including web analytics vendors. Oracle bought a Web Analytics companies (I predicted this also). I can see them integrating CRM and Web Analytics into one package.


5. Behavioral Targeting – 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 types 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.
   
   

What do you think?