Thursday, March 11, 2010

Opting-In to Advertising

Last week Ari Rosenberg, a weekly columnist for MediaPost, published an article that I found very interesting.  In  “Online Advertising Recall", he speaks of the ills of the ad industry, focusing on pinpoint targeting initiatives where we over promise and under-deliver for marketers and consumers alike.   I found his overtures around business practices, privacy, consent and “better” advertising refreshing and welcomed. 

I have spent the last 5 years working at or with companies using anonymous consumer data to improve the ability for marketers to deliver advertising messages in support of their campaign objectives.   I have found that the publishers and third-party advertising networks and technology vendors have always been missing one critical component---the consumer’s explicit consent.  Now many will argue that the publisher gets this consent thanks to their terms of service and the simple visitation to the their web site.  But I disagree. This is like saying that the moment I walk into The GAP to browse their jean selection they have the right to take my picture, body scan me and record every jean I picked up logging the size, sku and color and then using Google to analyze my photo and link it to my Gmail account and begin sending me direct mail about jeans and related accessories.  

And that doesn’t sound anonymous to me!

In the wide majority of cases these companies are not doing anything malicious or illegal but the consumer is bothered by the amount of information shared/captured -- or worse yet completely unaware. 

At kikin, we want the consumer to be part of the conversation and explicitly participate through opting-in to our experiences. And more importantly, we want the consumer to engage and comment on how their information is being used, making recommendations, customizing their settings and having immediate visibility into the associated data.  To be fully transparent, we are at the early stage of providing complete visibility to consumers, but already today we are leading the way with a clear opt-in and consent mechanism. Privacy and content preferences are easily managed and our terms of service/privacy policy clearly state what and how we are using information to improve our service and marketing programs. 

If you have questions about privacy or the benefits of opt-in we would be happy to discuss them with you!       

-Larry Allen, Monetization