Put Targeting Control in Users' Hands

iMedia Connection
by Dakota Sullivan, June 13, 2007

Behavioral targeting works. User-generated content gets response. BlueLithium's CMO says it's time to marry these two ideas.

By this stage of the game, we're all quite familiar with behavioral targeting and its many possibilities. The industry is abuzz with BT, heralding it as the great disruptor, or in some cases, debating the associated privacy concerns. But buzzwords aside, what does the future hold for behavioral targeting? Where is it all going?

Well, not only have we become BT experts by necessity, but we're also getting more and more comfortable with the concept of user-generated content, and more and more advertisers are dipping their toes into that pool. Allowing users (and potential consumers) to not only create content for websites that may be sold as ad inventory, but also to create the ads themselves, is an idea that is slowly catching on. Doritos saw great success with its Super Bowl ad contest, and why? Because putting marketing into the hands of its audience is such a deceptively simple, but effective, way of increasing response.

And that's the path we're hoping to see behavioral targeting follow. The beauty of behavioral targeting is its capability to let consumers program their own online advertising experience.

Despite its proven efficacy, one of the issues plaguing behavioral targeting has been the idea that "Big Brother" is stalking users around the internet, building up profiles and gathering information. That idea sets many consumers on edge, and really, who can blame them? They don't know that the information is not personally identifiable, that we're not gathering social security numbers and bank account PINs, that we're not creating profiles that say John Smith of Lincoln Nebraska purchased a lawn mower from HomeDepot.com. The anonymity of the internet is sacrosanct, and the very idea of infringing upon that, even if it's not necessarily true, scares the hell out of most web users. But what happens when we put the control into their hands?

Think of it like this: TiVo lets you program your TV viewing experience, and recommends shows based on the shows you record or watch on a regular basis. Amazon does the same thing with your shopping habits. Many other forms of communication are employing a user-generated model. Yet there is little to no backlash against that type of profiling.

In a not too distant future, behavioral targeting will work in much the same way, allowing users to directly decide, on a very granular level, the ads they want and don't want to see, even to the extent where they can generate their own advertising. So how do we get there?

We've made a good start with opt-in behavioral targeting. Ad networks that practice behavioral targeting are forthcoming about it, with policies and opt-out links right on their sites. But does the average consumer even know the name of the network serving them ads?

The Network Advertising Initiative is helping by offering the Consumer Opt-out tool, an online repository of all member ad networks, which allows users to opt-out of targeted advertising from selected networks. That puts a relative amount of control back in the hands of users, but what about that TiVo thing? How can they decide exactly the ads they want to be targeted with?

Technologies emerge every day that can help solve this problem. We have the capability to deliver an easy-to-use platform that enables users to determine their targeting destinies. One idea may be to include opt-in icons for ads across the network that enable users to affirm that they want to receive similar ads in the future. Another may be a customized user dashboard that saves preferences such as video ads, prize/incentive based ads, display ads, certain products or a category, certain brands, et cetera and serves ads based upon those user-specified preferences. Right now, several possibilities exist to get us closer to that goal.

We know behavioral targeting works. We know user-generated content gets response. Being able to marry those two ideas may take behavioral targeting to an entirely new level, eliminating consumer trust issues and boosting the effectiveness of the channel overall.