When we watched Minority Report we watched as Tom Cruise entered The Gap, had his eyes scanned and then was reminded of his last purchases. As he walked through the mall advertisements were catered to him, and it seemed like this innovative and new phenomenon. But this is, interestingly enough a phenomenon we have today. Thomas Friedman talks about this new edge in advertising when he is on the topic of Google and their newest innovations in advertising. Saul Hansell of The New York Times explains their advertising system, “For every page that Google shows, more than 100 computers evaluate more than a million variables to choose the advertisements in its database to display – and they do it in milliseconds. The computers look at the amount bid and the budget of the advertiser, but they also consider the user – such as his or her location, which they try to infer by analyzing the user’s Internet connections – as well as the time of day and myriad other factors Google has tracked and analyzed from its experience with advertisements.” Google has essentially made an effort to take back people’s interest in the advertisements that take up banner space by making advertisements personalized to what you click on and your location in the world. And this new system has most definitely produced monetary results for Google and the companies they advertise for, bringing in billions of dollars and expecting to take in more than NBC Universal and Time Warner in the coming year. Consumers are providing this information as they surf the web and media companies are appropriately investing in the information we give, but some think it is taking advertising too far. Some think companies are overstepping their boundaries by analyzing our actions on the web, but are they?
Facebook released a program similar to Google’s system in the fall of 2007 under the name, Beacon. Beacon’s system was almost a mirror image of the Google program, but with a twist—that information regarding your site visits, purchases and other Internet activity with specific sites would be reported to your network friends and connections on Facebook. Jesse Hirsh from CBC News in Canada writes, “…participating sites will add a few lines of code to their website, acting as extensions of the Facebook surveillance system. For example, when you engage in consumer activity at a partner website, such as Amazon, eBay, or the New York Times, not only will Facebook record that activity, but your Facebook connections will also be informed of your purchases or actions.” Kind of scary, huh? For example, Hirsh continues, “If you buy a book on Amazon, a little bit of code is embedded within that site then sends the data to Facebook and informs your friends that you’ve bought a particular book. Or say you’re surfing the recipe/food site Epicurious and rate or comment on a few recipes, again your Facebook friends will be notified of your culinary interests, as will Facebook itself and their advertising partners.”
As a result, Facebook users were not happy. Now, is this a result of not understanding the new technology or the fact that some might consider it a breach of consumer privacy? Most users thought it was the latter, a form of consumer surveillance that most anticipated from Facebook since the beginning. For example, many were skeptical of the social networking site because they assumed it was simply a platform to collect information easily. But users still signed up; in fact today 50 million users are using the system, and freely providing their information to the world-wide-web.
Facebook’s response was to still use Beacon but with user’s permission. Days before this release Facebook faced a Federal Trade Commission hearing in Washington, D.C. regarding online privacy and ads custom tailored to specific consumers. The F.T.C. was very concerned with the amount of information advertisers and social networking sites possessed. But then again, we as computer users and online social networkers are voluntarily providing this information for the advertising world to see! We write about products and brands we use on blogs and threads, we post videos on YouTube to show others concerts we have been to and music we like. One wonders if the most effective advertising we have nowadays is coming straight from profiles and threads our friends post onto the Internet.
It is fascinating to see the ways in which advertising agencies have come to meet us as consumers on the web, because we ourselves have exposed so much and have provided media industries with all of the applicable information to work with and reach us in new ways. Agencies such as Ogilvy and Mather have followed our tracks and now mimic our actions with YouTube videos being advertisements for products such as this Motorola phone ad—it at first seems like something our silly guy friends would make, yet its subtly telling us to buy the phone that is in it. One wonders what the next phase of advertising to us will be…
February 21, 2008 at 10:43 am
Are advertising companies doing us a service by trying to understand us better to market what we would theoretically (according to the information gathered about us) be interested in?
February 22, 2008 at 12:21 am
I don’t necessarily think they are doing US a service, it’s more beneficial to them because they are the ones who inevitably profit more. It’s psychologically making it easier for us to be lured into the net of e-commerce when the advertisements are from places we are constantly buying from since statistically we are repeat users on most sites we visit and are twice as likely to purchase from a site that is similar to our favorite online stores. It’s simple trend watching and then promoting similar brands and products to us based on prior purchases and key strokes. So in a way it’s really basic stuff, they watch us and repackage the goods. We take the hook and buy again.
I don’t think consumer behavior is highly theoretical, rather I think it’s quite predictable. We are just simply making it easier and easier for agencies and the companies they represent to know what we want.