Personalized advertising (or afterthoughts from Cologne)
Just came back from Cologne and I had an interesting conversation with my friend (who I was staying with) which stuck in my mind for the last few days. I am often surrounded by people who work in the internet business and in Cologne I met plenty of people who are from a totally different backgrounds (mainly students) and therefore can give a different perspective on things.
So we were sitting in a cafe in Cologne and as often the conversation went on to facebook and how we interact with people through it. Just top explain, in Germany facebook is not (yet?) as popular as in the US or UK for example, StudiVZ is the local equivalent (although it’s currently only available to students, like facebook used to be). The conversation then moved to how we show our lives to people on the internet and how companies can use this information to target internet users with personalized advertising these days. For my friend this was a scary idea that corporations would know our behaviour, interests and social connections and based on that offer products to us. For me that is not only normal, in fact I don’t see a problem with that – I only want products to be advertised to me that might be of interest to me.
Just as a quick explanation, many websites out there use personal data we might submit to advertise products to us based on that data. Google ads you might see on certain sites are always relevant on the content you see on that site, social networks (such as MySpace, facebook and even Last.fm who I work for) will use information you have entered for personalized ads and retailers like Amazon will ‘recommend’ products to you based on your past purchases.
Now Germany has always (well ever since I can remember) been a bit ‘touchy’ about data protection issues, the last time a Volkszaehlung (population census) was planed many people were protesting against it as this was seen as a unnecessary collection of personal data. Just from personal experience, people from Germany are more skeptical about data protection than people from the UK or US.
The obvious pros for making your personal data ‘available’ to companies that they can then advertise products to you that actually interest you. When I’m watching TV and see all the ads for cars and nappies (I don’t need a car in London and I don’t have a baby) I just think it’s a waste of money – money that could be invested in making the products better. If I want to buy a new, say, fridge I would be happy to get lots of fridge ads on TV as I want to know what available on the market.
I feel that the only and most important thing about your personal data and how and to whom you make is available to is that you have to be able to keep control over it. I’m happy to give information to facebook and then get personalized advertising but if and when I want to delete that information I want to be sure that this has been deleted entirely. If I want to make only certain information available openly I want to make sure that the rest is properly hidden. The problem with all collection of personal data by the Government is that it’s often compulsory (an example is the information that the US Government collects when entering the country – credit card, fingerprint, DOB, etc) and we have no control over what is being done with it and how long it will be kept for. In fairness we don’t know that either when dealing with corporations but at least there are rules for it (may it be laws or self opposed rules i.e. T&Cs) so one just have to make sure that they are being enforced.
Big subject this one (this post could fill a whole book), it will surly be more and more relevant in my job as well as me as an internet user (and media consumer).
PS: some pictures from Cologne: www.flickr.com/photos/pete_bug/sets/72157603078365128/