“For instance, today I have a ‘to-do’ list on my phone which contains tasks like – ‘pick up a gift for my father’. The phone has a GPS system and knows where I am. It also contains my calendar, so it knows when I am free. Why shouldn’t a search engine, which I have built a personalised relationship with, be able to sync up all that information and tell me when I am near a shop which has a gift in it that my dad would like at a time when I am free?”(The Telegraph)
This idea is problematic for people on a number of levels. Most people would prefer to rely on their ‘personalised relationship’ with their father to pick him a gift. In terms of what it means for web marketing, if Google only returned ‘the best’ search result for a query, SEM would change from each company having to be better than their competitors to each company having to be the pinnacle of their industry. This would eliminate most smaller players – unless they paid for placement.
For the consumer, this kind of hyper-personalised marketing means that new experiences would be limited. In addition, many people are already deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of their phone knowing their tasks, location and free time.
Marketing Projection has advanced to the point where Target predicted a teenage girl’s pregnancy in a process Forbes magazine called ‘data-mining your womb’. Their techniques aggregate information from other sources, purchase history and demographic data, actual and extrapolated. For pregnancy, they created a score based around 25 products, which allowed them to ‘guess’ pregnancy, due date and gender of the baby. They would then send the woman a booklet of pregnancy and baby related coupons, to encourage them to buy the products they would most likely need anyway. Effective, and profitable. But a little scary.
It can be irritating, too. After I criticised Rush Limbaugh on Facebook, they suggested I might like to contribute to his campaigns. As well as being poorly targeted, it was a reminder that Facebook is an advertising platform, and that they aren’t shy about utilising my data. Like I said about Pinterest – it’s a ‘free’ service and they have to keep going somehow. However, making it obvious reminds customers of this. The Target story led to consumer freakout, so they incorporated non-baby ads into the pregnancy coupon booklet. This tactic means that pregnant women have resumed using the coupons – because they no longer feel stalked.
There are dangers, as well. Facebook Places and other apps indicate to the world where you are, which can be dangerous. If you go away for the weekend, you wouldn’t stick a notice on the door advertising that fact – and people have been robbed for making the mistake. It facilitates stalking, and your personal safety may be at risk if an attacker notices a pattern to your daily routine. Adding ‘friends’ you barely know increases the risk, especially as scammers can set up fake profiles easily. Certain crimes have skyrocketed since Facebook went live… some due to user ignorance, some to internet savvy of scammers, some to deliberate marketing techniques that haven’t been properly evaluated.
