Filed under: 1 | Tags: AdAge, behavioral targeting, behavioural targeting, Forrester Research, gen y, Generation Y, Google, marketing
Why yes, you might be.
Just watched AdAge’s video segment on Emily Riley from Forrester Research’s recent speech addressing Gen Y and behavioural targeting.
They propose:
- forming an op-out database for those who do not want to be behaviourally targeted – ie. they want their healthcare data to be ignored but are okay with their retail data being studied
- creating a website where ‘Gen Y’ can post their wants (ie. a car) and receive advertising for those wants based on their information (ie. they’re a fan of BMW on Facebook)
I have number of objections:
- STOP taking ‘Gen Y’ as a singular marketing demographic. Generally young people are more switched-on technologically, but that doesn’t mean everyone has the same preferences about how they interact with that technology – that’s like saying all adults buy the same food because they’re more kitchen-savvy.
(I will admit I have a bias against the term but ‘Gen Y’ is used FAR too much these days.) - When it comes to consumers being able to ‘opt-out’ of having their info in a database, it’s a bit like communism: it might work in someone’s head as an idea, but it will never work in practice.
People are less likely to bother to opt-out, or may not even know how – it’s a phenomenon they propose to exploit.
I suspect the FTC will object to it because of this.
Previously, people ‘opting out’ of telemarketing databases – ‘no telemarketing’ or ‘do not call’ lists – have found themselves part of a new database for all those organisations not bound by the ‘do not call’ list. Someone will try to find a way to get hold of their information, because technically a whole behavioural segment would be excluded if you didn’t have it.
Of course, the speech brushes over this to talk about behavioural targeting. - …and behavioural targeting will be controversial. But let’s look purely at effectiveness.
It actually limits the consumer to their previous choices.
You’re trying to predict the next point on the graph by extrapolating the previous ones.
Well, if you want to talk about Gen Y traits…youth throughout the ages have demonstrated higher risk-taking traits. They want something new, something off the radar – not something served up to them.
To implement this assumes that all brands would be able to advertise.
To have a limited choice would be too generic and take away the joy of search – half the fun is the feeling that you’ve discovered something before everyone else has. (That’s contributed to the success of a little company you might know called Google.)
Sure, they can still search on their own, but the more they find something they prefer by looking outside of your behaviourally-targeted advertising the less they’ll see value in using the service in the future.
Trading on information is probably Facebook’s best chance at actually making money since the realisation that the most successful advertising involving Facebook has been through apps, which are free to create.
But most people will feel a slight discomfort about having someone else own their information. It’s one thing to post it to share with your friends and another thing to have it being sold to corporations.
Take a leaf from Google’s philosophy… Don’t be evil.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: 10 to the 100, B&T your RSS feed isn't working., brands, crowdsourcing, Democreated, Google, internet democracy
The beauty of the internet is that it gives the potential for everyone around the world to connect with a speed and low cost we never would have dreamed possible.
Increasingly, it seems like companies are using the internet as a polling place to test out their new ideas and even to make their business decisions for them.
This is creating, if you will, business by ’internet democracy’, sketched out by Andrew Keen in ‘Cult of the Amateur’. (Ironically, Wikipedia’s definition is brief and suggests more the use of the internet for political process.)
Let’s look at how ‘internet democracy’ is being used in business…
First, Google’s ‘10 to the 100′ project::
You’ll find all the details at the 10 to the 100 website, but essentially for its tenth birthday the search engine giant has asked for proposals for social projects and committed $10 million to funding the projects that will help the most people.
From there, a shortlist of 100 ideas will be left to the public to narrow down to a 20-idea list, from which Google will pick 5 or less projects.
Crowdsourcing and then deciding by internet democracy probably makes it one of most minimal-effort advertising methods since everyone caught the viral bug.
Another case of business by ‘internet democracy’ is Democreated, a participatory design project by Spanish agency La Doma:
Yes, just take a short questionnaire on what you want to see in a brand, and you will get a share in the resulting crowdsourced business. (Just don’t forget to learn Spanish so you can read the terms and conditions.)
The philosophy goes that the characteristics that receive the highest votes are incorporated into a consumer brand, the resulting brand will be the most popular too.
So what? This has been done offline before!
Sure, we’ve had the Idol phenomenon, and plenty of phone polls, but this is different.
These projects are open to anyone across the world with an email address and an internet connection. It remains one vote per email address, which is a better way of ensuring one-person one-vote than phones. And better, it’s free for voters. No ridiculously escalated call rate, no dealing with grumpy administrators like in actual democracy – this is quick, easy and cheap.
So the internet democracy is being used for good and for profit, but what are the potential issues?
- Is what everyone wants, compiled, going to be of guaranteed mass appeal? For example, if I took the beat of a Rihanna’s ‘Disturbia’, the piano of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, the guitar of Nirvana’s ‘Smells like teen spirit’ and the lyrics of James Blunt’s ‘You’re beautiful’, all of which have been hit songs in their time, would I still get a number 1 song?
- Even though the internet is now widely available in most developed countries, are all voters of interest in a position to participate? (It seems logical that a project that receives the most votes will affect/is liked by the most people, but only if internet users represent the entire market…)
- How much does your average web surfer know about business?
Google has maintained some control but La Doma has left themselves entirely at the mercy of the public… - What’s the incentive for the public to participate in the way you want them to?
Despite these, at the moment the concept retains enough novelty for it to grab attention for the product and the firm. Smart move – I will be very interested to see how it works out.
