Do you know who sells your private information to advertisers out there??
As someone who has been deep into the analytics and advertising business in the last few years, the fact that web sites out there are trading on our personal information is not a big surprise. Still, sometimes even I get abit of a shock seeing how efficient this trading can become.
Yesterday I decided to check on prices fro flights from San Francisco to Cancun Mexico. I did a search in 3 sites: Kayak, Priceline (through Kayak) and Delta.com.
Just two hours later I got the following text message from AT&T on my personal cell phone: “Now roam in Mexico for just 25 cents per minute standard time…”.
It’s one thing that companies are trading your email address for quick profits. I long time got used to that and I always use my “junk” email adress. But when it happens with my cell number, I start to feel a lot more sensitive. Unfortunately both Kayak (a service which I love) and Delta has my cell number, so I dont know who to blame here.
Personal feeling aside, I think this is a great example of how targeted behavioral advertising can be so much more effective than normal one. First, as this is very relevant to me there are much higher chances that I will actually buy the product. Second, if I would see this ad as a banner or Hulu, I would actually pay attention to it and not treat it just as disturbance.
With the advancement of targeting technologies and behavioral exchanges form Google and Yahoo, we will start to see many more ads like this in the coming years. What we need to make sure is to define where the line corss between better more relevant ads and the complete dismiss of our privacy.
This blog is Shahar Nechmad' stream of Consciousness.
