Behavior tracking is simply part of today’s online experience and our virtual profiles become more and more complete every time we log in. Personally, I love that with Chrome, I can have the same personalized, customized-by-my-search-and-click-habits Web-browsing experience on my iPad, MacBook, smartphone and work PC. And now, thanks to our new Nest thermostat, Google can keep tabs on me even when I’m not staring at a screen (Does Google know every time I walk by? Can Google see me? Should I put on a robe?). It seems we’re closer than ever to having a totally personalized life.
As we all know, with online tracking comes online ad targeting. Love it or hate it, unless something major changes in data privacy, it’s here to stay. However, targeted ads don’t always get it right. Like when I was writing an e-mail to my sister, complaining about the state of my socks and shoes after a massage therapist rubbed my feet with oil (#firstworldproblems) and an ad for Dr. Scholl’s odor-eater inserts showed up on the side of my Gmail account. According to a study conducted by Blue Research on behalf of Janrain, a user management platform, 96 percent of consumers acknowledge having received mistargeted promotional information.
While mistargeting may not be new, the alarming finding is that as a result, 94 percent have taken steps to break off communication, including automatically deleting e-mails, unsubscribing from lists and never visiting the site again. Simultaneously, 88 percent of consumers have encountered social login – the use of an existing ID from a social network such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc., for registration – with more than half (51 percent) using it to register and log in to other sites. Yet while the vast majority of online consumers (91 percent) are satisfied with social login and most report a preference for personalized communication, brands have yet to seize the opportunity to improve online marketing as a result of the data they can collect in the social login process.
I suppose I am one of the 6 percent of consumers who haven’t taken action to guard against mistargeting. I’ve always been amazed and a little taken aback by how scary-accurate ad targeting can be and I’m willing to overlook the Dr. Scholl’s inserts in favor of one day, maybe someday soon, having an even more integrated and tailored online experience.
What does it say about online advertising if 94 percent of consumers are turned off after being mistargeted? How can a brand/site/retailer win the consumer back? Are there other potential drawbacks to ad targeting? As the algorithms get smarter and the data grow and grow and grow, how can ad targeting improve?