...and it may just change the direction of momentum on "behavioral targeting" based online advertising techniques and the promise of 'right ad, right place, right time, right price' that many in and around the ad networks are now chasing as the holy grail.
If the volume of outspoken privacy proponents on blogs like this one are any indication, there seems to be an awful lot of "fear and loathing" still out there around the topic of tracking, cookies, and targeting. [Apparently a lot of people don't mind - even prefer - the tradeoff of less relevant advertising in exchange for more behavioral data protection. This seems like another example of psychology vs. economics, namely that not every sociological behavior can be explained solely using clever tools of economic theory, because the simple fact is that most human beings aren't perfectly rational. See: The inability of economists to develop a cogent theory explaining tipping -- similar to explaining why anyone would pay more than nothing voluntarily for Radiohead's new album, as I recently did (3 pounds sterling, an increasingly princely sum with the weakening of the dollar, Thom Yorke you can thank me with a short comment post to this blog when you are ready...)].
If the American Internet-surfing public gains the opportunity to remove themselves from Web tracking, does that blow a large-type hole in the online ad networks' ability to command above-remnant rates for their inventory in the long-run?..... Or will this whole conversation ultimately be inconsequential to the larger trend of aggressively skyrocketing marketing and media spend online?
Time will tell.
Either way, brand marketers (and the agencies who serve them) are going to need access to Web media planning and buying tools that are more effective and more efficient than a room full of grey matter if they are going to keep growing their ROI at a comparable pace to their growth in spend. And they are going to need tools that rely on more than just clickstream and cookie data, it would appear...
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