Do consumers want to know what online advertisers really know about them?

Originally published on The New Group blog on 3.23.09

A recent article on the New York Times blog, An Icon That Says They’re Watching You,  brings up a fascinating issue in the area of behavioral analytics and consumer control. I guess the answer really depends on who you are and what the context of your desire to know is. I mean, I’d be fascinated to know what a given online advertiser knows about me that triggered them to serve me a particular advertisement or offer. I already have fun guessing when I see surf trip ads on facebook or a Jenny Craig ad on snow-forecast.com...clearly someone is targeting me by my behavior, and that’s fine, I get a kick out of it.

Maybe that’s just because I’m in digital marketing. However, I’d wager that there are many consumers who would be curious to know, if they were aware the information was available to them.
           
Apparently Google is blazing a trail to make this happen in the near future with its new behavioral targeting system by including the phrase “Ads by Google” on all its advertisements. You’ll be able to click on a link and access a limited profile of what Google knows about you, and even edit some of the preferences. It will be interesting to see what percent of consumers choose to access the data, and even more fascinating, how many edit any of their information.

While many in the advertising world may see this transparency to show consumers what we really know about them as a negative, I see it as a positive. If people don’t already get that advertising is in many cases necessary to fund the production of the content they consume, then that’s a fundamental piece of reality to acknowledge. Beyond this though, what if the ability to target brand advertising actually got better because people knew they could edit their anonymous online identity with ease, and trusted the systems that managed this information?

Consumers giving brands more information to better target offers and ads – it certainly brings up controversial issues around trust with online data. It will be interesting to revisit this thought in five years. I bet I’ll have more control over editing my anonymous advertising data. What do you think?