Something we’ve been hearing a lot about lately which will soon doubtlessly
affect the Australian digital industry is how behavioural ads
have evolved into a
target for the privacy regulators.
cross-site data by default in late May as part of a major update to this
legislation in 16 years. However, the legislation is being expanded
that all cookies must be
manually opt-in from now on. This is a potentially shocking change to the
user experience on the web, a baby-and-the-bathwater scenario taking us back
to the early years of the web when Netscape and IE1 used to barrage us with
technical messages about cookies and often irrelevant security questions.
Other measures are enforcing the right to be forgotten which is a curiously sad sounding addition to the burgeoning social web. So will this European attitude spread to the rest of the world? The US is
currently formulating a similar set of regulations. Microsoft and others
taking a globalised vendor’s perspective, are keen to see a set of laws it
can adhere to in all regions. Presumably it will spread via the browser
features supporting the laws in those most restrictive regions which will
then become the defacto user-behaviour in all regions. How many people
actually understand and change their browser settings? At the opposite extreme some people happily
share their browsing history with the world without the intervention of
advertisers. So clearly there will be a spectrum of opinions in between.
What worries me is that the loudest voices at the scared end of the worry
spectrum may spoil it for everyone else by reducing the emerging
intelligence of the cloud or just annoying us with a billion popups. So what are some of the technologies already emerging to support or fight
this new legislation? Firefox 4 has added new “Do Not Track” feature which was just created by a
developer not an industry regulator, which surprisingly in practice at
present does nothing! It just tells the web you’d rather not have your ad
viewing history aggregated across sites and the nice advertising people will
of course comply. The guy
who
implemented it in Firefox, is really taking the heat both from site owners
for implementing it at all and also from geeks for technically doing it
wrong too! These technical purists are clearly more worried about a missing
“x-” in an HTTP header than the ogres of advertising collecting their shady
browsing habits. Mozilla have interestingly taken the feature out of the
advertised list, perhaps indicating they’re unsure about it themselves. Google has also launched
an opt-out plugin for Chrome the next day and IE9 RC had a similar
tool included. At the launch of Internet Explorer 9, we discovered that Microsoft had also
implemented Mozilla’s Do Not Track header – a very surprising move to adopt
an entirely non-standard, non-tested, cool-sounding feature from a
competitor. Oh wait, I remember, Microsoft have been doing that for years. Most people know AdBlockPro and other advert blocking plugins but these are
different – blocking adverts entirely not just the behavioural tracking.
This confusion is causing many site owners to get very angry about the
recent news, thinking the next generation browsers are going to shut off
their income entirely. This is not the case, although it will starve the
more creative site owners of detailed information to use in finding their
customers. But hey, spam is so cheap to send, lets just continue advertise
to everyone and hope. Personally I’m all for it- the beast has my details already there’s no
escaping that. If adverts become more targeted and thus more successful then
perhaps they’re be less of them. When I was a child, I remember telling my
mum that all adverts should be banned, except for new inventions – “I know
about washing powder already, I don’t want to hear it again!”. I’ve since
hated advertising in general, mostly because I’m a scientist so the wasteful
scattergun randomness and pervasiveness of it saddens and annoys me, so
ironically I’d be more than happy to have advertising scientifically
targeted towards my preferences: less blokey sausage car football adverts
and more arthouse tofu moon robot products thanks! But what do other people think? I asked a random sample of nearby industry
experts: “To have advertising that is targeted toward me is surely better than being
shown the same generally irrelevant ads that everyone else is seeing. I can
still choose to ignore the ads to the same degree I do now but when I do
choose to have a look there will be a greater chance that they will be
advertising something I am interested in. In as far as my information being
tracked? It is already and unless you have something to hide I don’t have a
problem. I can’t imagine that the information about my viewing history is
interesting or useful in any way that could compromise me. ” Andy Gregory –
Creative Director, Deepend. “But take, on the other hand, someone who partakes in activities that aren’t
illegal, but aren’t exactly looked well upon by people not in the scene
(e.g. BDSM). It wouldn’t help to have preferences from your ‘scene’ life
start showing up when you check your mail at work or something.” Rob Howard
– Senior Developer, Deepend. “I have a dream – in 15 years advertising will be dead. Marketing will be
so well tailored to the user that it will be seen as an invaluable
information tool rather than rubbish I don’t care about. Our kids will laugh
that their Dad was shown tampon ads and kids had to sit through infomercials
about Tupperware. I’m more than happy for the likes of Google to read my
email , calendar,
docs etc to make educated decisions to show me tailored advertising.” David
McGowan – Director, Nomad Agency. “If you were a normal person, and you went to Google, and did some research
in a topic (let’s say BDSM to continue Rob’s example). Then you went to
Facebook and did something else and adverts for the previous topic started
hammering you – you might blame Google and Facebook and think ‘hey! Are they
sharing my stuff? I don’t trust either of them now I’m closing my
account…’. Of course we know that technically neither Google nor Facebook have anything
to do with this – it would be the likes of Doubleclick, MediaMind and
Eyeblaster doing the aggregation, but it could be something that websites
themselves might not want to be blamed for and thus they might be inclined
not to book ads with this kind of service – given the choice. Furthermore as
Google owns Doubleclick, who’s to say their data is as separate as we’d like
to think? There also can be some comfort from feeling anonymous amidst a sea of
irrelevant ads – at least you know they don’t know anything about you!” Dan
Taylor – Senior Analyst, Deepend Sydney. GetUsedToIt.gif Get used to it. Again. Pip Jones
Technical Director p: +612 8917 7900
w: www.deepend.com.au Our latest – Paddle Pop Lick-a-Prize!
Deepend Awards
Contact us on +612 8917 7900!
Deepend – Design Strategy & Creative Solutions
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