Re: [projectvrm] This Student Project Could Kill Digital Ad Targeting - Ad Age Mobile

[Don Marti < >]

begin Liz Coker quotation of Mon, Jul 08, 2013 at 03:59:54PM +0000:

> Yes.  Had read this.  As you can see in this article, if you push the ad 
> industry they push back.  They will simply find another way to preserve 
> their businesses.  (the highlights/emphasis below are mine).
> 
> http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/203956/iab-one-in-five-users-send-do-not-track-request.html

The email spammers pushed back, too.  They made the
mistake of assuming that the early, vocal anti-spam
users were atypical hackers/greybeards/radicals,
and that all the regular users were eagerly awaiting
email spam.

"If we just make enough noise about all the great
deals we're offering, the regular users will demand
that their elitist mail administrators take the
filters down!"

That failed.

Today, we're seeing a similar pattern with targeted
ads.  "If those weird radicals will just get out of
the way, regular users want to be tracked!"

But 20-25% of users are setting DNT, but more than
double that are "not okay with" tracking.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012/Main-findings/Targeted-advertising.aspx

The more you know about cold calls, the less likely
you are to take one.  The more you know about email
spam the less likely you are to answer it.  And the
more you learn about targeted ads...

> "Zaneis says that the high numbers of people with active do-not-track 
> signals means that “it is no longer tenable” for the ad industry to allow 
> consumers to opt out of online behavioral advertising by setting a 
> do-not-track signal. Instead, the ad industry appears to be proposing to 
> “de-link” or “de-identify” data about users who activate do-not-track 
> headers. Such measures potentially could make it harder to determine 
> people's names based solely on data about the Web sites they visit, but 
> that depends on the methods used to “de-identify” the data."
> 
> That being said – this approach does not build trust and transparency into 
> anything.  It just creates more chaos.  If a site detected you were from 
> Narnia, then it could resort to other methods to try to ascertain your 
> 'true identity".  And will users remember to "turn it off" every time they 
> want to transact in VRM mode? Likely not – too much hassle. I'm sure most 
> of us understand why she did this, but, IMO, for VRM to succeed we need a a 
> system based upon accuracy and respect, not obfuscation.

Accuracy has to work both ways.  As advertising
intermediaries introduce a loss of accuracy in the
information flowing from advertiser to user, the
users are less and less confortable with having too
much information go the other way.

-- 
Don Marti                      +1-510-332-1587 (mobile)
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/        Alameda, California, USA