• by Tom Hespos , May 4, 2004

I think it's about time that we started proactively educating consumers about how data is used to target advertising.

In the past, I've identified with privacy-conscious consumers who are suspicious of how publishers and advertisers gather and use data to deliver relevant advertising. Many of them either called specific companies on the carpet for improper use of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or revealed situations in which the potential for abuse of data was great. Certain companies did go over the line with their use of data profiling and I'm glad that their initiatives were exposed.

These days, however, in looking at postings on privacy-oriented websites and message boards, I'm coming to the conclusion that many privacy advocates are taking an alarmist stance, even though they often don't have the information they need to form an educated opinion. This isn't good. If we let the proliferation of untrue facts go unchecked, consumers will eventually oppose all use of data in ad targeting, which is not what we want.

Recently, I've seen a lot of discussion about how privacy advocates have gone too far, IMHO. Classifying applications like Claria and WhenU as "spyware," in my opinion, goes too far. These are legit behavioral marketing applications that are permission-based, and are worlds away from true spyware - applications that install themselves on machines without permission, attempt to mask their presence and go out of their way to keep the consumer from uninstalling them. I think painting Claria and WhenU with this broad brush is overzealous.

Similarly, I've recently been involved in discussions of the spyware removal tools, the two most popular of which, by default, clear cookies set by popular ad servers when they remove rogue applications from systems. Clearly, cookies are not spyware. Why then did the application developers include ad server cookies in their "bad program" list? Is it that cookies are a legitimate threat to privacy? Or do they simply not know enough about how cookies are used to target advertising and record site visits and back-end conversions?

What's clear to me is that if we don't do something about this, and consumer fear leads to people making the wrong assumptions about how data is used by online marketers, we're going to be limited in terms of the targeting we'll be able to take advantage of. One of the things that consumers fail to realize is that non-PII data is commonly used to help deliver ads that are more relevant. If they take steps to appear invisible to online marketers, they'll simply get a lot more advertising that is irrelevant to them. Who wants to return to the days when untargeted pop-ups dominated the online advertising scene? Not me. I suspect consumers wouldn't want to see this either.

I also want to make the point that we should be realistic about any sort of consumer education initiative. There are people out there who do have enough information to make an educated decision, and have come to the conclusion that all cookies are evil, that anything that identifies specific surfing behavior is evil, even if it is permission-based, and that all such things should be banned. We won't change those minds. But, we can keep these people from foisting incorrect information on the general Internet public by being proactive about educating consumers about how data is used.

I think we should do this - and soon. In the absence of easily accessible and accurate information, consumers will jump to their own conclusions. If those conclusions are based on erroneous facts, it would be a shame.