Do Not Resuscitate Do Not Track, Part III

February 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Do Not Resuscitate

What a difference a year and a little election make. In 2007, the Marketing Consigliere blogged in Do Not Resuscitate Do Not Track Part I and Part II about the importance of government steering clear of regulation of behavioral targeting.

Late last week, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report entitled “Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising” advising the manner in which markete rs gather, store, collaborate and act upon data gathered from and about website visitors.  While basically echoing the Bush Administration’s hands-off approach, there was a slight change in philosophy and the Obama Administration did warn that the Federal government would be prepared to step in with regulation if the industry’s self-regulation could not clearly protect the privacy of online individuals.

According to the new FTC, there are four “governing concepts” by which marketers must continue to heed:

The first is transparency and control – marketers that gather data for behavioral advertising should disclose to website visitors in an explicit, understandable way the existence of such a practices and enable the visitor to choose whether or not to allow the practice.

The second principle advises reasonable security and limited data retention – marketers need to establish controls that ensure “reasonable” security of collected data, and should retain that data for only “as long as necessary for legitimate business or law enforcement needs.”

The third principle regards material changes to privacy policies – a user must be requested to give their consent before a marketer uses behavioral data in a way that is “materially different” from the manner in which it was originally explained how it would be used.

Lastly, the fourth principle dictates that marketers should obtain affirmative express consent before they use sensitive data for behavioral advertising.  Sensitive data includes but is not necessarily limited to minor status, health or financial information.

Ironically, the previous week, eMarketer reported in a newsletter about a ChoiceStream survey concluding that personally targeted advertising is desired as the dollar amount spent online by an individual buyer rises.

US Internet Users Who Are More Willing To Click On Ads If They Are Personalized

However, the same newsletter reports on a TRUSTe commissioned TNS Global survey that indicates that while most Americans are aware that data may be collected about them, many are uncomfortable with targeted ads even if the data used to serve the ads cannot be tied to their name.

US Adult Internet Users' Attitudes towards Advertisers Using Their Browser History for Advertiser Purposes

Additionally, a substantial number of Americans would opt out of receiving behaviorally targeted online ads even if they would then have to see ads they would never be interested in.

So while the Marketing Consigliere is still against this form of regulation that the new Administration may feel compelled to apply, he acknowledges that the Federal government may actually be listening to its constituents.

Marketers, don’t forget vox populi.

Filed Under: Advertising, B2C Marketing, Behavioral Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Do Not Resuscitate Do Not Track, Part II

December 21, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Since the latest blog in The Marketing Consigliere this week on proposed Behavioral Advertising regulation, the Federal Trade Commision has issued “Online Behavioral Advertising – Moving the Discussion Forward to Possible Self-Regulatory Principles,” a 7-page proposal of voluntary guidelines with which businesses can regulate themselves.

Online Behavioral Advertising - Moving the Discussion Forward to Possible Self-Regulatory Principles

After reading the document, The Marketing Consigliere is satisfied that the FTC not responded in a knee-jerk reaction to the shrill, lone voices of those that do not fully appreciate the far-reaching benefits of Net-Centric Marketing.  However, the Marketing and Advertising worlds should not rejoice yet – the “proposed principles” put forth in the document are broad enough to probably get a lot of nods of agreement, but are still quite a stretch when it comes to execution.

The of proposition of voluntary, self-regulatory actions is good and in line with the free market concept, and “Reasonable Security” should have no argument but “Limited Data Retention” for consumer data flies in the face of data mining and business intelligence, which demand terabytes of data over long periods of time to detect consumer trends.

Regarding “Affirmative Express Consent for Material Changes to Existing Privacy Promises,” there is an unusual logistical burden for a C4ISR Marketer to let every past visitor know that the lawyers have once again tinkered with the website’s language.

Also, regarding “Affirmative Express Consent to (or Prohibition Against) Using Sensitive Data for Behavioral Advertising,” to whose standard of “sensitive” must the Marketer adhere? How does one determine which customers are more apt to regard certain data points as more sensitive than others?

On the other hand, as a believer in technology, the business rules and logic can be implemented to be customized in the long run – it would be a tedious task and a big headache for Marketers until some best practices were to arise and be shared.

Let’s see how industry responds to this…

Filed Under: Advertising, B2B Marketing, Behavioral Marketing, Business Intelligence, C4ISR Marketing, CRM, Data Mining, Leadership, Marketing, Net-Centric Marketing Tagged With:

Do Not Resuscitate Do Not Track

December 18, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Federal Trade Commission LogoThis is a topic I’ve needed some time to digest mentally before I stuck my proverbial virtual foot in my virtual mouth.

I remember a few weeks ago reading about the FTC hearings on the “Do Not Track” requests coming from some consumer groups. Instantly I thought that the whole behavioral targeting engine would come to a screeching halt. My C4ISR Marketing common sense told me that “”Do Not Track” should be derailed. The Internet and the computing power behind it are inevitably evolving and this process of evolution will result in a higher level of intelligence – especially business intelligence in how we gather, process, extrapolate and act on data. Someday we will look upon our current behavioral targeting as “primitive,” but for now it’s all we have to try to deliver more relevant advertising and other information to an online visitor.

This kind of tracking will become increasingly critical for CRM and data mining, which can bring better economies and products to consumers in the long run. Net-Centric Marketing demands the symbiotic relationship of buyer and seller – the buyer gives information and money, and the seller gives what the buyer wants. If the seller does not have what the buyer wants, the buyer gives the seller more information or the buyer finds another seller who can deliver.

The buyer gives the seller more information by either verbal or written communication, or better yet with his or her actions (which I have been told speak louder than words). Actions tell things that words don’t, and marketers know this. Web analytics tell of certain behaviors that help marketers optimize websites to improve traffic. Behaviors can tell public relations people how their company measures up in many ways.

Kudos to the Interactive Advertising Bureau for taking the right stand against “Do Not Track.” The Marketing Consigliere hopes that they don’t get drowned out by the wailing and gnashing teeth of the so-called “privacy” advocates. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which he has known about and even admired for years, seem to be getting shrill in their old age. With the emergence of C4ISR Marketing technologies, he is willing to bet that more people will want to be catered to regarding advertising – they’ll want products more in line with their desires, lifestyles, and behaviors. They won’t want to be mass marketed to like so many of us have been in the past.

Even in light of the privacy faux pas and ado surrounding Facebook, if the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to truly protect privacy, it should be doing more to help keep both consumers and companies safe from the real threats out there like organized crime and others who try to steal identities, commandeer processing power of privately-owned computers, and use fraud to trick people out of their freedoms and money.

Filed Under: Advertising, Behavioral Marketing, Business Intelligence, C4ISR Marketing, CRM, Data Mining, Metrics & Measurement, Net-Centric Marketing, Predictive Analysis, Public Relations Tagged With: , , , ,