Porres.com – Eric's Humble Place in Cyberspace

The first: Every Click You Make: Internet Providers Quietly Test Expanded Tracking of Web Use to Target Advertising – this is an article from the Washington Post about ISP-targeting companies.  I’ve been following these companies closely as I think they potentially represent a really interesting future for targeting.  Any ad network or publisher will only see a portion of a person’s daily web activity, while each individual’s ISP sees all of the traffic going through the pipes.  The big question there is…if I knew 100% of a person’s surfing habits, would my targeting be 100%+ better than what I know on any given day or week of activity an ad network can see my corresponding activity?  And, none of these companies in my opinion have yet done an adequate job of disclosure.  They all say that ‘opt-outs’ are disclosed and built into the T&Cs, but as the article rightly points out, those are buried in the T&Cs and not easy to spot.  My fear is that this new form of targeting will quickly die the death of 1,000 Claria cuts wherein even though the companies hire great Chief Privacy Officers, they do little to engage and involve the public in the appropriate discourse, disclosure, and advantages that targeted advertising can provide.

And speaking of targeting, the WSJ posted an article on Friday called TV Learning Importance of Targeting.  It feels a bit like a ‘fire is hot’ and ‘water is wet’ and ‘well isn’t it obvious?’ type of article wherein Starcom Mediavest and Comcast conducted a 16 month study and found that:

…households that had ads targeted to them were about a third less likely to change the channel than those that were shown traditional ads.

One big challenge a traditional TV marketers will raise is that he or she can’t get mass targeted reach.  Likewise, one of the biggest challenges to the agencies that produce TV creative is the ability to product “targeted reach” ads–marketers want the big idea, but in the age of targeting, bigger isn’t necessarily better. With that said however, there are a number of start-ups and semi-start-ups that have developed modular ad solutions to deliver targeted TV ads where targeted TV ads can be delivered.  The TV industry will eventually catch up to Internet in terms of addressability of ads–but there are financial forces in place to keep that roll-out as slow as humanly possible.