Re: Aw: Re: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the NYTimes R&D lab… Realising Consumer Rights

[Don Marti < >]

I don't know if we can "unequivocably prove" anything
in this area, so no math.

We do see surveys where people state preferences to
avoid database marketing, but so far relatively few
companies have been able to turn that preference
into a business, so we can't get a price.

The biggest example would have to be the spam blocking
business -- but because every email provider offers
spam blocking as part of a bundle of services,
it's hard to split out "people are willing to pay
this much to avoid database marketing" from that.

(I wish there were a paid email service where the spam
filter cost extra -- then we could go from that price
and the count of spam per day to put a dollar figure
on database marketing avoidance.)

Web ad blocking is smaller but significant.

On the mass marketing side, Tivo is the biggest
example -- but as Bob Hoffman has repeatedly pointed
out, the "Tivo Effect" is small, and the number of
minutes of TV commercials that people view is
actually _up_ since the Tivo came out.

If you put all the media in a row, with the "best",
most database-ish kind (email spam) on one end,
and the "worst", least database-ish kind (Super Bowl
commercials) on the other,  which ones can support
a market for filtration tools?

I want math too.  I'd like to do a good survey
of privacy tech users.  (I predict that the more
privacy tech someone uses, the more money he or she
spends online, even when you control for income,
demographics, and skill.)

Don

begin Graham Reginald Hill quotation of Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 08:07:29PM +0200:
> 
> Hi Don
>  
> The confusopoly is an interesting behavooural economics plaster to cover an
> underlying lack of fundamental differentiation wound. It is a common sign 
> of a
> lack of innovation. The OFT in the UK has been active in tackling it, 
> sometimes
> with detrimental unintended consequences.
>  
> Your last paragraph states, "even though privacy creates more and
> longer-lasting wealth than database marketing". Has the maths be done to
> unequivocably prove this statement, or is this a case of John Stuart Mill's
> utilitarian 'ought' vs 'is'?
>  
> Sadly, as Michael Sandell reminds us, value beats values every time.
>  
> Best regards from Cologne, Graham
> -- 
> Dr. Graham Hill
> 
 
> UK +44 7564 122 633
> DE +49 170 487 6192
> http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
> http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
> 
> Partner
> Optima Partners
> http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
> 
> Senior Associate
> Nyras Capital
> http://www.nyras.co.uk
>  
>  
> Gesendet: Freitag, 18. April 2014 um 16:06 Uhr
> Von: "Don Marti" 
> <
 >
> An: "Graham Reginald Hill" 
> <
 >
> Cc: "ProjectVRM list" 
> <
 >
> Betreff: Re: Aw: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the 
> NYTimes R
> &D lab… Realising Consumer Rights
> Hi Graham,
> 
> +1 to that Consumer Futures report for using the word
> "confusopoly". Combine confuseopoly-based price
> parsing time with transparency-based privacy policy
> parsing time, and how is anybody going to have time
> to buy the right anything?
> 
> I don't agree that marketing in general is a zero-sum
> game.
> 
> Targeted marketing is zero-sum or worse, but mass
> marketing done right can pay for content that's
> directly useful to the audience, and even has positive
> externalities. People are still reading the Kurt
> Vonnegut stories paid for by ads in _Collier's_
> magazine in the 1950s.
> 
> You're going to have intermediaries for any ad medium,
> even putting up handbills. In the case of tracking,
> the intermediaries have to sell to marketing people
> and persuade regular people to accept it. In the case
> of privacy protection, the regular people already
> accept it, or think they already have it, but who's
> going to pay for it?
> 
> The intermediaries in database marketing...
> http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/marketing-technology-lumascape/
> are already making themselves heard with
> pro-surveillance policy positions. A few
> intermediaries on the privacy side could help balance
> it out.
> 
> But the problem remains: even though privacy creates
> more and longer-lasting wealth than database marketing,
> database marketing gets overfundeded while privacy is
> underfunded.
> 
> Don
> 
> begin Graham Reginald Hill quotation of Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 09:19:39AM 
> +0200:
> > Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 09:19:39 +0200
> > From: Graham Reginald Hill 
> > <
 >
> > To: Don Marti 
> > <
 >
> > Cc: ProjectVRM list 
> > <
 >
> > Subject: Aw: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the NYTimes
> > R&D lab… Realising Consumer Rights
> > X-Priority: 3
> >
> > Hi Don
> >
> > The blog post was very interesting. It reminds me a lot of a recent 
> > Consumer
> > Futures report on 'Realising Consumer Rights: From JFK to the Digital Age'
> > (http://www.consumerfutures.org.uk/files/2014/03/
> > Realising-consumer-rights.pdf). The report took JFK's four rights taken 
> > from
> > his 1962 spage on consumer rights, added four newer ones and showed how 
> > they
> > were being enabled by a range of technology-driven consumer behaviours. 
> > One
> of
> > the consumer behaviours is Radivcal Transparency. The report is well worth
> > reading and triggered a lot of thought on my 90 minute flight home 
> > yesterday.
> >
> > I agree entirely with you about consumers and transparency. All of the
> studies
> > suggest that consumers would like to opt-out of much of the tracking that
> they
> > know they are subject to but don't know the extent of. Fixing this 
> > requires
> > consumers to take responsibility for managing how they are marketed at, 
> > for
> the
> > marketing industry to change its targeting approach, or for an 
> > intermediary
> to
> > sit between them to mediate on the consumer's behalf. Each brings their 
> > own
> > challenges. The challenge for consumers in taking responsibility for 
> > managing
> > how they are marketed at is that to do so requires a degree of technical
> > knowledge and skill on the part of consumer and the time to use it. Your
> > Average Joe has none of these. So he isn't going to change. The challenge 
> > for
> > marketers to change their targeting approach is the fear that the process 
> > of
> > change will put marketers at a temporary or permanent conpetitive 
> > advantage.
> > Targeted marketing clearly works for marketers. It's purpose is short-term
> > sales in support of marketers' product P&L focus. A customer-responsive
> > intent-driven MeCommerce model would clearly work better for those 
> > consumers
> > who express their intent, but it would practically rule out all 
> > market-making
> > activities where marketing creates response that otherwise wouldn't 
> > exist. So
> > marketers aren't going to change. The challenge for an intermediary 
> > sitting
> > between consumers and marketers is that they have to win the trust of both
> > parties for their business model to work. As intermediaries are a
> fundamentally
> > a cost to the market as a whole, they have to be paid for either out of 
> > the
> > customer or the marketer's pocket. They are the most likely source of 
> > change
> in
> > the zero-sum game that has become marketing today. That is not without its
> > problems. A quick look at current markets where intermediaries play a
> > significant role suggests that they often capture cashflows in the market 
> > to
> > the detriment of other actors, including consumers. Just look at the 
> > airline
> > travel and car insurance markets.
> >
> > We should be careful what we wish for; we might get it!
> >
> >
> > Easter greetings from Cologne, Graham
> >
> > --
> > Dr. Graham Hill
> > 
 
> > UK +44 7564 122 633
> > DE +49 170 487 6192
> > http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
> > http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
> > http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
> >
> > Partner
> > Optima Partners
> > http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
> >
> > Senior Associate
> > Nyras Capital
> > http://www.nyras.co.uk
> >
> >
> > Gesendet: Donnerstag, 17. April 2014 um 23:09 Uhr
> > Von: "Don Marti" 
> > <
 >
> > An: "Doc Searls" 
> > <
 >
> > Cc: "ProjectVRM list" 
> > <
 >
> > Betreff: Re: [projectvrm] Some possibly VRooMy stuff from the NYTimes R&D 
> > lab
> > begin Doc Searls quotation of Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 03:51:08PM -0400:
> > >
> > > <http://blog.nytlabs.com/2014/04/07/
> > in-the-loop-designing-conversations-with-algorithms/>
> > >
> > > Angles: market conversations and the Internet of Things.
> > >
> > > Thoughts?
> >
> > "Transparency" seems to be the first thing that
> > people come up with when they start thinking about
> > surveillance marketing. Let's make the vendors be
> > "transparent" about what they're doing, and the users
> > can decide whether or not to participate.
> >
> > But the problem with transparency is exactly that
> > it does require people to spend time thinking about
> > surveillance marketing. This doesn't seem like a
> > problem to people who already spend time thinking
> > about surveillance marketing. It doesn't impose any
> > extra work on them. But for normal people there are
> > only so many hours in the day, and little time to
> > think about some new business model.
> >
> > In the best case -- secure, well-communicated
> > transparency -- privacy becomes limited not by the
> > user's technical skill, but by the cognitive load
> > on the user of understanding how he or she is being
> > tracked in more and more situations.
> >
> > Jonathan Levitt, at Advertising Age...
> > "In-Store Cell Phone Tracking Pits Consumers Against
> > Retailers"
> > http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/
> > store-cell-phone-tracking-pits-consumers-stores/292628/
> >
> > "Industry research shows that consumers overwhelmingly
> > reject cell phone tracking. In a recent OpinionLab
> > study of 1,042 consumers, 77.0% said that in-store
> > cell phone tracking was unacceptable, and 81.0% said
> > that they didn't trust retailers to keep their data
> > private and secure."
> >
> > So here's the VRM-ish part of all this. Users are
> > already communicating about their privacy norms.
> > There are vacant niches for information technology
> > products and services to help the users enforce
> > these norms.
> >
> > --
> > Don Marti
> > http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
> > 
 
> 
> --
> Don Marti
> http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
> 
 

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/