The Bad Behavior of Behavioral Based Advertising

Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:23:48 +0000

Behavioral based advertising—BBA—has been around since at least 2008 (in tech years that essentially makes it a legacy technology). In early 2009 Google announced that they would be employing BBA and Facebook quickly followed. Interestingly, both companies touted its benefits saying that they were aiming to make the overall user experience more personal, useful and meaningful. Privacy advocates were of course alarmed, people lobbied for opt-out features, but no investigations were launched and any real furor seemed to die out quickly.

BBA may be considered a marketer’s dream, but for many it is tracking tomfoolery that borders on digital stalking. I am confused as to why people are so alarmed about the iPhone tracking your location when every time you are on the web, your usage patterns are being tracked using cookies that are automatically downloaded onto your machine. The data is logged, sent to any company that pays for that information (and there are hundreds), they store your data, and then that data is sold to advertisers and you are specifically targeted. To me, that’s a lot more unnerving than the small possibility that someone is going to take James Bond maneuvers to pinpoint where I am at night.

In his 2009 article, “Does Society Benefit from Behavior-Based Advertising?” Ben Parr proclaimed that efficiency cannot come at the cost of privacy. He called for safeguards for protecting privacy and stopping abuse, citing that the absence of safeguards would lead to distrust that may have a lasting effect.

Opt-Out Feature Wherefor Art Thou?

In their Q1 report, Trends in Behavioral and Contextual-Based Advertising 1Q 2011, Research and Markets analyst Heather Way said that paramount to the success of the advanced advertising strategies is self-regulation, which she said includes providing full transparency and opt-in/opt-out solutions and continuing to test consumer threshold for audience-based advertising techniques. To that end, in 2009 the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Council of Better Business Bureaus (BBB), got together to enact what they considered to be best practices for BBA. At the time, they predicted that the practices would be in full execution across the industry by 2010. The collaboration was a move by the industry to attempt self regulation in the face of pending legislation.

The associations were joined by representatives from the entire advertising ecosystem, including advertisers, ad agencies, ISPs, Web publishers, search engines, ad networks and software providers. AOL, Disney, Facebook, Google and Verizon were among the participants.

Pamela Jones Harbour, the FTC commissioner at the time responded positively saying, “Consumers deserve transparency regarding the collection and use of their data for behavioral advertising purposes. I am gratified that a group of influential associations—representing a significant component of the Internet community—have responded to so many of the privacy concerns raised by my colleagues and myself.”

The principles comprised seven best practices. The first three, the Education Principle, the Transparency Principle and the Consumer Control Principle, called for more transparency about when behavioral advertising is at work and an educational fact page that explained how behavioral targeting works. It also focused on giving consumers the control to opt-out of targeting.

Linda Woolley EVP, government affairs at the DMA said, “The issue of transparency and consumer control and choice is very important. When a third party ad appears on a Web site, there should be an icon or word somewhere near that ad, that a consumer can click on and then in one click, they can exercise choice.” At that 2009 meeting, the exact icon or word was still being determined. The idea was that once it was chosen, the industry would educate the public about it. Fast forward to 2011.

I have personally never seen an easily identifiable opt-out button and/or phrase attached to an ad in my life. I hold all marketers and BBA aficionados responsible for my ensuing stress every time I try to find out how to “protect my rights.” For instance, last week I visited an online technology publication and they required me to register to see their news aggregation. I know that this really means that as I am registering they are simultaneously adding me to an annoying email list that will spam me even after I die. I knew I needed to opt-out of whatever it was they are trying to collect from me. I began to look at all the fine print to find the opt-out button/language. It was not visible. I actually typed into their search bar, “Opt-out” and was then led to a list of articles about opt-out features, and unhelpful data. I found the company legal disclaimers and that is where I found a link on how to opt-out. I clicked the link and my friends let me assure you that I am not exaggerating when I say that it threw up a page listing more than 71 different data collection organizations. I had to manually click on all 71 to individually opt out. I was horrified. I now clear my cache and browsing history every single evening before going to bed. Whatever ideals and dreams the FTC had back in 2009 of an advertiser-user utopian union, it clearly didn’t happen like that.

In addition to the sheer terror that this nonsensical exercise caused me, I am also severely traumatized by an act of BBA a week later. I went online and searched for a living room lamp. I ended up searching many sites including Lamps Plus. I bought my lamp elsewhere. The next day I logged onto a security site to read about hacking and lo and behold a Lamps Plus advertisement popped up. Coincidence? Maybe. Hours later I was merrily reading a business intelligence blog and Shazaam! Lamps Plus has chandeliers on sale! I logged off for the night. Needless to say I am fearful of lamps collecting under my bed. BBA gone wrong? I think so.

Make It Stop

Irrespective of opt-out features, any company that subscribes to third-party data gathering is going to advertise to you based on what the magic cookies have collected and what they deem your interests are. So if you opt-out of 1, there will be 10 more and then 10 more after that. It’s giving me anxiety as I type this. How do we make it stop? Where is my blanket opt-out and do-no-track list? What is the “Yes We Can!” war cry for over-stalked consumers? I for one am not a consumer that buys anything habitually. I do not need a weekly supply of lamps. I don’t want anonymous organizations knowing what color underpants I prefer. In fact, I believe I am part of a growing number of people that are so irritated by BBA and its frequency that we are purposely avoiding stores and or businesses that employ this feature. I understand that there are many people that disagree. There are many that simply tune it out and many that welcome the convenience. All I want is the assurance that I can continue on my web-tastic ways with the only worry being whether or not I have a good wireless signal.

EEC Adopts New Email Measurement Standards, Encourages Industry to Follow

Stephanie Jordan — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:04:43 +0000

The Email Experience Council (eec) is the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association and its members are professionals that represent trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners and others that focus on electronic marketing. Its founding came about for a few reasons, but mostly because email is largely unregulated when it comes to marketing. The council believes this lack of regulation has allowed what they term “unscrupulous marketers” to abuse email.

A function of the ecc is its member roundtables, which set standards and seek initiatives pertinent to email marketing and communications practices. One issue it recently tackled is measuring email campaigns. Email marketing success has traditionally been driven by measurement, however the metrics used have not been standardized across the industry.

“Industry standard metrics is so foundational that many marketers don’t even think to ask if an open is always an open or if delivered doesn’t mean reaching the inbox,” says eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable vice-chair and Return Path, Inc. VP of Global Market Development Stephanie Miller.

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable worked to create standardized metrics for industry adoption. The two-year effort ended in March, when the eec introduced eight email marketing measurement standards that it hopes marketers will adopt.

As of late last month, just two vendors (AllWebEmail and Email Transmit) have actually adopted the standards, but the ecc notes that 11 others have promised to implement the standards in the coming six months.

“I believe in this standard because it provides four main benefits to the email marketers. It improves testing validity by limiting environmental variance, improves industry benchmarking through increased data conformity, improves internal reporting for benchmarking by easing the transition between vendors and finally use of the standards will normalize data across the industry, a key assumption required for any statistical analysis”, said eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable co-chair Luke Glasner of Glasner Consulting.

The new measurement standards include eight definitions for reporting on Accepted, Render and Click-through. In the past, not only were multiple names and terms used that confused some marketers, but also different vendors used different calculations for the same terms.

Project co-chair John Caldwell of Red Pill Email believes, “The email industry has long been without measurement standards, using terms and definitions that make it impossible to benchmark properly or compare vendor performance with confidence. The good work of our volunteer eec member committee is the first time the industry has rallied around a common set of measurement standards.”

Organizations that adopt and conform to the eec’s email marketing measurement standards will be given an official seal to display on the company’s Web site. Those interested in participating will find an application on the ecc site.

Eye on Messaging is written by Stephanie Jordan, editor in chief of Messaging News. If you have story ideas or news to share, email her: sjordan [at] messagingnews [dot] com