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The past couple of years have seen a lot of activity at the intersection of advertising and social media. Google and Facebook, in particular, have invested heavily in this arena, seeking ways to profit from selling advertising that targets customers using the data collected from their users. In both cases, most of this data has been handed over voluntarily. Google users are enticed to do so with the expectation of better search results, better email, and access to Google’s many online resources, tools, and applications. Facebook’s users share personal information naturally as they interact with their network of “friends.” In fact, “sharing” is at the bottom of just about every activity available to participants in the social web.
Flash back a few years and we encounter a huge backlash against companies attempting to collect browsing data for use in targeted advertising. This negative reaction was widely understood to be an expression of fears about loss of privacy and personal security. Many of the technologies used were quickly flagged by security systems as spyware and even as viruses. The underlying issue was that these techniques took what wasn’t intentionally shared.
Now, at the end of 2010, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that some of these previously-shunned companies and technologies are making a comeback:
One of the most potentially intrusive technologies for profiling and targeting Internet users with ads is on the verge of a comeback, two years after an outcry by privacy advocates in the U.S. and Britain appeared to kill it. … Now, two U.S. companies, Kindsight Inc. and Phorm Inc., are pitching deep packet inspection services as a way for Internet service providers to claim a share of the lucrative online ad market.
What’s changed in the interim? The article focuses on one significant alteration in approach: these “services” are now opt-in rather than opt-out or invisible. Why would anyone opt-in to spyware? It seems that these companies have learned a thing or two from the battle between Google and Facebook: people will volunteer their data if sharing is a natural part of the activity in which they are engaged. And so these companies will attempt to convince you that your surfing experience will be enhanced if you let them track you. And, in some cases, they or their customers (generally ISPs) will offer free, customized services in exchange:
The companies now offering ad services based on deep packet inspection believe they have learned how to make the services acceptable to privacy advocates and Internet users. This includes asking for permission up front and offering people incentives to receive targeted ads, such as Kindsight’s free security service, which includes identity-theft protection. Customers can pay a monthly fee to receive no ads.
Whether or not these trade-offs will pay off is yet to be determined. But the return of these techniques and the increasing competition for the terrain at the border of social media and advertising indicate that the battles of the future will likely take place within boundaries established by our willingness to share.
More on the web:
Steve Stecklow & Paul Sonne, “Shunned Profiling Technology on the Verge of Comeback,” The Wall Street Journal (11/23/2010)
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