Is Behavioral Targeting an Invasion of Privacy?

Suppose, a new product on the market caught your eye and you decided to check it out but didn’t purchase. Now, everywhere you go, be it on YouTube, a blog or a forum with ads-enabled, you see advertisement of the same product. Isn’t this intriguing and let’s say, a bit irritating?

But, marketers would disagree with you. This strategy is known as behavioral targeting and it’s actually nothing new. Marketing analysts have been collecting data on consumer preferences long before the Internet was born.

However, the information we can glean from consumers is now virtually unlimited. People share their personal details online every day and our web journeys are tracked and watched as we carry out our daily Internet interactions.

Consumers are slowly waking up to the idea that their movements will provide someone with information and that information is used to target them as potential customers.

But is this an invasion of privacy?

Quick Conversions

Behavioral marketing is a marketer’s dream come true. Through analyzing a consumer’s past behaviour and current interests, it becomes much easier to generate marketing material that is tailored to that person.

Data companies such as Google can track your online behaviour to supply you with advertisements that are more relevant to you, rather than simply bombarding you with random adverts in the hope that one will somehow offer the product or service that you need.

Behavioral targeting is all about quick conversions.

The key tool in the behavioral marketing arsenal is the cookie. Cookies are essentially markers placed into the consumer’s web browser that tell data companies what the consumer was looking for and which pages they browsed.

It also categorizes that content, so that online marketing companies can quickly see what it is that the consumer is most likely to respond to. However, again there is the question of privacy to consider.

Pros, Cons and Privacy

The benefits of this form of behavioral targeting are obvious – they get to target consumers with advertisements and links that are pertinent to their lifestyle choices. Conversely, this is also a benefit for the consumer in that they are being exposed to advertisements that might bring them into contact with better deals or products than the one they are currently investigating.

Consumers also have a degree of control in the online environment, in that they also have the option to reject cookies and keep their online habits untraced. In addition, cookies, while they are able to identify a consumer’s online activity, are not able to collate data that reveals a consumer’s identity. They cannot collate names, locations, work places or any other information that might lead to an advertiser being able to identify that consumer. Once consumers are aware of this, they tend to respond more favorably to behavioral targeting online.

Behavioral targeting might be an inconvenience for some but, technically, it is not an invasion of privacy. As long as cookies are not gathering user-identifiable data, then the only concerns for the online user is whether or not they are interested in receiving these adverts.

If they’re not, they can either reject cookies or delete any existing ones in their browsers. More and more online users are becoming aware of the purpose of cookies and, as such, are able to decide whether or not they want to incorporate them into their browsing experience.

However, it may well be that there are large numbers of online users who need a greater level of education and awareness about how these things work.