I am a great fan of the World Advertising Research Council (WARC) - its provides great content and the daily news alert is succinct yet highly relevant. Today’s issue picked up on the announcement by Google of a behavioural advertising system. The system will target ads at user based on analysis of their browsing history. This is an optout scheme that will exclude online behaviour relating to health, race, religion and finance.
In the same edition WARC reported on a 15% reduction in global advertising revenue – across the board i.e. digital and traditional media.
The ‘measurability’ of digital marketing remains one of the key drivers for investment in the Web by marketers and this will continue to be the case while the industry matures and develops a method for measuring and tracking engagement and influence (i.e. qualitiative metrics).
The traditional media sector is obviously already suffering at the hands of digital. To the digital advertising sector – and particularly the massively dominant Google - the measurability of digitial advertising is a major strategic advantage.
As competition for marketing budgets increase, I think we can expect to see companies like Google and others making more and more user data available in order to maximise their share of the total overall investment. At no cost and at the touch of a button, these organisations can enhance their strategic advantage over traditional media.
There is a strong lobby arguing that this strategic advantage comes at the expense of consumer privacy but Google has been commended in parts for its approach.
Could the launch of Google Voice be a strategy designed to overshadow media interest in targetted advertising.
The New York times provides a guide to Google’s privacy controls here. Industry standard story < there and an interesting counter view for Gawker here.
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