On watchdog the other night many consumers were appalled when watchdog, “using the Freedom of Information Act,... discovered that the DVLA sold nearly 1.1 million names and addresses to private parking companies last year” (Rizi 2011). Well if they think that is bad they do not want to know what is going on whilst they are online!
Internet Privacy isn’t real. If internet privacy was real Cookies wouldn’t exist, Digital Advertising Agencies wouldn’t exist, many shops and organisations that started online wouldn’t exist e.g. Amazon.co.uk.
I know it all sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s true. The only way that you can buy something online, or sometimes even browse a website, being “tricked into giving away our personal information” (ScienceDaily 2009)... So no privacy there. The only way advertising can make money online is if they know where someone is and how frequently their advert is being seen or clicked on e.g. (CPC) Cost per Click or Cookies. In all fairness advertising is all over the internet, so no privacy there either.
This type of information is being mined as you read this blog, information that you could only make private if you kept web browsing as a thought. However we, as a race, seem to find it necessary to send, almost vomit, all manner of information into the internet constantly via numerous different communication platforms such as: Blogger, Facebook, Flicker, Foursquare, LinkedIn, My Space, Newsgrounds, Twitter, YouTube etc.
The information that we are voluntarily giving away is very private and in some cases, as seen in the video below, unwarranted and very personal. Many consumers seem to be blissfully unaware of exactly how and what happens to their information once enter is pushed, the mouse is clicked or a purchase is made and that you do not have to upload something onto YouTube inorder for someone else to be able to view it.
As you can see in the video, consumers know that they are sharing personal consumer information with the world on a site such as YouTube, in this case about a passion for the, World of Warcraft PC Game, another online platform that requires a lot of personal information being ‘given’ to the internet post purchase but prior to actually being able to play the game e.g. Credit card details, address etc. And with there being over “12,000,000” (Mrs.katie evans 2010) players, that is a lot of private information being whimsically exchanged for entertainment.
A massive “41% of consumers are unaware of any of the different types of cookies” such as 1st Party, 3rd Party, Flash / Local Storage and only “20% delete or clear their browser’s cookies once a month or less” (Butner 2011). Consumers are not aware of the fact “they are being tracked” (Bilstad and Enright 2011) or ‘stalked’ from webpage to webpage, every word on Facebook analysed by companies such as Radian6 who’s technology culls “brand mentions from data streams including public Facebook user status updates, Page updates and wall posts” (Constine 2011), and every purchase on every website quantified and recorded by cookies, companies and companies with cookies, all explained perfectly by the video below.
However as an Advertising practitioner the groundbreaking technical advances that I have been speaking about above as scary privacy invaders are going to make my job in the future a lot easier. Data mining for advertisers is one of the most rapidly prominent methods of targeting and profiling consumers.
Privacy for advertisers and consumers is in fact, although blatantly a well hidden one, a bad thing when it comes to data mining. Advertisers need information from consumers to be able to do their jobs with as much precision and insight as possible (Perner 2010). Advertisers want companies, such as PayPal, to have consumer’s private information, if it will facilitate the ease of the advertised products purchase. Advertisers want to know where consumers are and if they are single or not so that they can advertise products accordingly.
It could also be suggested that we as Advertisers are helping the consumer by ensuring that they are having a pleasant time on the internet, in the sense that they don’t have to look very hard for something they like, or if they go back to a website looking for a product, it shouldn’t be too far away, we even go as far as suggesting other ‘wonderful’ products that a consumer might like, “producing special content targeted to specific users” (Bilstad and Enright 2011). It sounds brilliant to me.
Privacy may be an issue, but if privacy was ‘in’, it would be an injury to all marketing communications, not just Advertising. But as we all know Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerburg suggests privacy is no longer a social norm. What do you think?
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