Let's Make a Deal: Your Privacy for Better Ads

Ok, who's up for this deal: you give me your private information, and I'll use it to make sure that I show you better ads. You want better ads don't you?

Well no. No one wants better ads. People don't like ads. People don't like being sold "stuff."

I've been thinking about this lately, and it's led me to do some research into trends in behavioral marketing. Generally, what I've found is that generally, the term is very general. It's one of those new, hot terms that has yet to have accepted, defined boundaries (sort of like umm, Web 2.0). At any rate, in the broadest sense, most people are using it to mean, "tracking what users do/have done on your site" and using that to market to them, as opposed to demographic or lifestyle data.

Ok, got it. So sometimes this behavioral data is multi-session, sometimes it's one session, sometimes it's anonymous, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's really just data mining and eCRM and sometimes it's really just web analytics. We can swizzle it many different ways, but in the end... it's what people have done or are doing on your site (or maybe your network of sites).

Ah, but here's the rub. When I'm on the internet, I don't always have the same purpose on the same site. Therefore, targeting content and ads to suit what I've done in the past, well that's not really the best way to go. I might just find it limiting and frustrating. Also there's the issue with the household computer. Your teenage son does not want to see ads on Amazon about self improvement books. And this just barely touches on the whole thing of privacy... Now, your teenage son might guess that Mom and Dad are having relationship issues. Bad news.

Here's an idea... what if marketers quit thinking about the best way to sell us more junk, and started thinking about how to optimize the user's experience online. Now that would be something. No one wants to trade their privacy for better ads, but we might trade it for a better experience.

Hi, I'm Bob and this is my best friend Nike Air

JupiterResearch just released a new report, "Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape." For those who have been paying attention over the last few years, nothing in it is a big surprise. However, the report does give quantitative credibility to those initiatives we (who do not live under rocks) have known to be true for some time.

The summary: if social networking is a party, it's about to be sponsored by marketing tools everywhere. They can smell money, and they are on it.

The old marketing idea of "making the brand your customer's friend," well, it just goes one step further in the social networking space... the brand can actually BE your friend. Just add Coke or Pepsi as your literal MySpace friend and there you go. You're in with the in crowd.

In addition to documenting the viability of this new venue, Jupiter found that, "30 percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers' opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only 10 percent trust an advertisement," something an Austin startup, BazaarVoice - also quantified about a year ago.

Nothing here is groundbreaking, but it does mean that social networking and the Web 2.0 way of thinking is gaining some real credibility. You can now officially sell it to your boss and budget-doler-outers.

Now, what I really look forward to is some really innovative campaigns/implementations.... come on... impress me!

Are you ready for DST?

DST, in case you didn't know, is Daylight Savings Time. It's coming early this year, and it's bigger than you think. I wonder, when they were touting the savings, did the calculate the cost?

I've been hollering (politely, of course) about this at my own university since late last week after dozens of messages from separate sys-admins trickled and then poured in over the last few days, and we set up a web page to gather all our information. I asked for someone to coordinate on the technical side of the house. As I said to my boss on Friday,

This is one of those, "I've been doing this for ten years and something isn't hitting the right note," things. It's a big impact, there are a lot of patches that will have to happen, and it doesn't feel like anyone has their arms around the whole situation.

Sometimes we see things happening where all we can do is raise a flag and make sure that everyone knows what's going on. If no other actions on their part are required, them I'm fine with it, but I want them to say it. At the very least, I would like us to check in with them and make sure there's some common dialog happening.

I'm sorry I can't explain it in more objective terms. It's a gut thing based on how the whole thing has evolved.

Later on, I explained again more succinctly:

Basically, I see the potential for trouble, and I want someone technical to make sure there isn't any trouble or to say that it's all under control. Trouble could be anything from it doesn't go well to it's extremely uncoordinated and a lot more work that it has to be.

She trusts my gut and we have someone on the technical side. It's validating to read this post in CIO.com titled Y2K Redux from February 12. I used this same example with the work folks on Friday. (Yes, I'm feeling smart today.)

CIO.com is, by the way, a valuable bit of reading for non-CIOs. If you want to become knowledgeable about the business of IT, read it. TWs have constant angst about staying valuable: understand the business you're in and what issues your bosses are dealing with.

[A word before we get to today's topic. We contributors have agreed to post once a week, and that will be about all I'll be able to manage for awhile. I come home from work with all sorts of ideas stirring around in my head, but I'm also brain-dead and dead tired, so writing is going to happen after I've had a day to recover. I start with this caveat in case there are any expectations of immediacy. With that said, we're becoming very web 2.0 at work, and there's a lot to say because we are currently undergoing a complete overhaul.]

I have a few soapboxes at work; I stand on them a lot as we go through the process of redesigning our web site. One of them is that we need to support our technical community in two ways:

1. providing them with information about our systems so they know:
• how to implement them in their specialized environments (creating capability)
  
• what processes we follow for making decisions or changes (creating trust)
  
2. enabling them to share their extensive information with each other and with us (creating community)

Historically, we have very little information available for them. We are a black box. There's some information out there, but someone typically has to direct you to it. There's no findability, and there's no link to what is available from our product pages.

What's interesting is that I get a lot of support for the idea of providing better findability for the information that will create capability. Some aren't sure of the idea of creating community. I think this has two causes. We do have a few in our customer base who like nothing better to take potshots. They lie in wait for the opportunity to arise. The other cause is a fear, I believe, that people will not participate. I'm not too worried--we have good participation on our mailing lists, and I think we can translate that to forums and community generated content.

Where I run into resistance (fear) is creating trust by opening up the black box. We run centralized IT services (network, phone, security, etc.) that others can and often must use. They can also run some of their own services. We have a lot of power, and we can make things difficult for people, oftentimes inadvertently (these usually end up being labeled "communication problems," but that's another post). That makes people upset and more likely to take potshots.

So, we open it up. Listening to our folks complain about the complaints they get and talking to customers tells me that this is what we need to do. As we enter the content phase of the web site redesign project, we will integrate that at several levels of the site--mission level, SLAs, policies, product/service descriptions, and more. Exposing information creates trust.

Admitting You Are Wrong - It Works!

Jonathan Schwartz never ceases to amaze me in his blog. He's approachable, likable, and puts a face on Sun that makes me want to buy their stuff (a comment many ppl make in the blog on a regular basis). In the same way Jobs's little kid excitement makes you want to go buy the new Apple gadget in a rush of childish enthusiasm, Jonathan makes you feel like dealing with Sun will be an amicable, "friends sitting over coffee at the local coffee shop" deal. He's looking out for you, and he's going to explain Sun's decisions in customer-centric terms. He gives blogging a lot of credit in Sun's turnaround, but it's not just the blogging that does it. Lots of big companies have exec bloggers. Yup you know what I'm saying. Enough said.

So this post: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/good_bad_and_brave is an excellent example of a CEO stepping off the podium and engaging the blogosphere. What does he say in this post? Well.... from the post:

"And before you send me the email, yes, I saw the entry written by Matt Mullenweg - and all I can say is... I'm really sorry, Matt. That's not the way Startup Essentials is supposed to work. We screwed up, and you're completely right to suggest if that's the norm, we should kiss goodbye our aspirations of reestablishing our business in the startup community.
If there's anything I can do to win a second chance, I'd like to know. I appreciate your first sentence. "

Sun has a campaign to engage startups and basically, they treated this gentleman VERY poorly. He blogged about it, and Schwartz addressed it in his blog, apoplogized, and one will assume, made it right. One would also assume, whoever dropped the ball in the program will also be fixing their ball dropping issues. Boy I know I'd be shaking in my boots if the CEO had to take one on the chin bc I did a potential customer wrong.

The repliers to this post LOVE what Jonathan said. LOVE it. While they still hold Sun responsible for taking care of their customers, Sun gets a lot of credit for stepping up to the plate and admitting a mistake. The attitude is: "no harm, no foul, just fix it and you're fine." Honesty and trust go a LONG way in any relationship, even business relationships. Yah, I know, hard to believe, but yet... true.

Here's a few comments:

"This blog amazed me enough to want to reply, to communicate, and that's the first step in making me a customer. "

"Thanks for listening to the blogosphere, and thank you for taking time to respond. So many other business leaders could do more of that...."

"A CEO who blogs is rare. A CEO who publicly admits a mistake is priceless."

The rest of the replies are chock full of advice and insight. Some of it very usable for marketing departments, some it not. But all of it showing engaged customers and potential customers.

And that is priceless.