Behavoural Targeting

An interesting article in MediaWeek. I am reproducing the first four paragraphs here.

'It’s doubtful that between managing two wars and implementing a massive economic stimulus package, behavioral targeting ranks high on President-elect Obama’s first 100days’ to-do list.

Yet, with a new administration set to take charge this week, backed by a larger Democratic congressional majority, the online ad industry is swiftly moving to present itself to Washington as a business that can police itself.

Thus, when a coalition of the marketing world’s largest trade groups formed last week to announce plans to develop a set of self-regulatory guidelines for behavioral targeting ads, the timing seemed deliberate, and the message clear: you don’t need to handle this, we’re on top of it.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers, the Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Council of Better Business Bureaus, pledged to tackle privacy concerns over just how consumers’ Web searching and surfing data is used by marketers.'

This is highly relevant at this time. At Pingar, we are looking at the whole issue of profile mining, demographics and ad placement. A key over-rider for Pingar is to develop strategies that ultimately protect our individual user's personal identifiable data and then map these strategies against both current and future regulation.

It is also relevant since I renewed my membership of the IAB NZ last week and it is good to see that they are actively involved in this debate. It WILL influence the long term models on which future online ad related strategies are based.

For Pingar, through 2009, this will be a major part of our ongoing research work.