3PHealth Blog

Why the proposed Do Not Track standard is going to fail – it’s all about Trust

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Trust

As the saying goes “A civilized society cannot function without trust”, ergo it’s also appropriate to extend that premise to the Internet – “A civilized Internet based society cannot function without trust”.

So how do we define trust? There’s a great definition to be found on the Web – link – in short:

“Trust is a person’s willingness to accept and/or increase their vulnerability by relying on implicit or explicit information.”

So how does this all related to the proposed Do Not Track standard? Well the idea is a simple one – the user goes to his/her browser, clicks on the Menu, selects the Privacy option and then checks the box marked ‘Ask Web sites Not to Track Me”. You are now sending a message to a content provider that you are unwilling to “Trust” their behavior when it comes to sharing your data. You are reducing your vulnerability by transmit explicit information.

Now imagine you find out that even though you are sending this explicit information that the Web content provider is not only still tracking you but also sharing your data with other parties. Instantly your trust in them is diminished and the lack of value they offer you is also greatly diminished. Trust is therefore ‘Contextual’. You have relied on a Web content provider to NOT do something and they have now failed.

This is exactly where Do Not Track is heading. The very second you transmit that explicit value to a content provider and they do not honor it the whole standard instantly collapses. Ironically they cannot afford to stay in business and offer free services WITHOUT the ability to share your data.

So what does Do Not Track need in order to overcome this problem. What would help content providers ‘WANT’ to honor that setting? Well for one it needs to be marketed as a true standard where one can have ‘confidence’ in the fact that if you chose the DNT setting that you will not be tracked. Secondly it needs to be extended to support additional ‘Contextual Fields’ that the user can share with the content provider. Binary solutions (like the current standard) lack the context needed to deliver value (without breaking the rules). For DNT to truly work it needs a mechanism whereby I can share more data and increase my trust levels in return for a better experience.

This becomes the win – win we so often talk about. Right now it’s a win – lose. If I enable that Privacy setting and the content provider honors it then all 3rd parties are prevented from seeing my data. This means that only the very largest content providers survive and overnight a huge part of the ad industry is wiped out. Ergo the incentive to cheat is so ridiculously high that DNT will fail instantly. If it’s a choice between sharing data and staying in business and not sharing data and going out of business what would you do?

Do Not Track is NOT a privacy solution, it’s NOT a Trusted solution – in short it offers no value to an industry that is built on sharing your data. What we need is a solution that increases the value of my data that I’m willing to share – we call that solution Choice®

iOS 6 and DNT

Friday, September 21st, 2012

Interesting – Apple quietly snuck in Do Not Track inside iOS 6. Here’s how you turn it on. Go to Settings > Safari and then enable Private Browsing. There’s NO indication that DNT is turned on until you check the headers coming from the browser. To do this we set up an echo page that reflects back everything that came from the browser. (link)

Here’s the results:

iOS 6 and DNT

The Future of Social Media Marketing?

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

The following article was written by Emily R. Coleman, President of Competitive Advantage Marketing, Inc. When I first read it I absolutely knew that Emily had hit the proverbial nail on the head, and with her permission we’re now adding it to our blog.

A friend recently sent me Evan Bailyn’s Outsmarting Social Media with the instructions to “Read it!” It’s an interesting book, well worth the time to look at. Bailyn has some thoughtful and practical suggestions and insights on marketing through Facebook and Twitter (although I think Facebook’s new Timeline has thrown him a curve).

The subtitle of the book is “Profiting in the Age of Friendship Marketing,” and one of Bailyn’s key themes is how social media are changing the way marketers and advertising agencies will be using “influencers.” With social media, the concept of “influencer” (or “trend setter”) is being brought down from the realm of celebrities to individuals in our lives whose opinions we respect.

What makes this granularity and personalization of influence so potent is that we decide who influences us, taking the guess work out of picking spokespersons. As we add more and more personal information to our personal social media accounts, and as Facebook and Google (whom Bailyn sees as the main competitors in this emerging arena) perfect algorithms for real-time and truly personalized search, marketers and advertisers will be able to deliver their pitches at the level of the individual. (In fact, Google has just rolled out its newKnowledge Graph or “semantic web” to make searches more personalized and intuitive.)

Bailyn foresees the time when ads for sneakers, for example, will be sent to you with a picture of one of your individually chosen influencer friends wearing or endorsing the brand.

As a marketer, that sounds pretty exciting. People will tell us what they want, what they need, and what they worry about. Even better, they’ll tell us who they know who would influence their buying decision. Wow! My job just got a whole lot easier.

I have no doubt that sometime in the not-too-distant future, women will be getting personalized lingerie ads and Cialis™ promotions will be targeted more precisely.

As an individual, however, the whole thing makes me a little queasy.

It’s probably a generational thing, but I have a profound objection to the notion of my friends becoming shills for products. Certainly, I’m interested in their opinions and experiences with products and services and just plain stuff. But when I want those opinions, I’ll ask for them. (And I really don’t care what underwear my friends prefer.) More important, as soon as these opinions are co-opted by advertisers, they will be significantly diminished in my eyes. (Actually, I’d probably get in touch with my friends and ask them if they knew they were being used, and what were they thinking!).

Certainly, the idea of friendship (or relationship) marketing is not new. It is, after all, the basis for all the multi-level marketing (MLM) programs.

What is new is taking the personal out of the personal relationships, interjecting third-party interests between the individual and the individual’s influencers.

What is new is the coming unprecedented ability to gather and manipulate vast amounts of personal information at the most granular and individual level.

Okay, so I admit it. I’m old-fashioned. I’m not looking forward to a brave new world where we put more and more of what used to be private information online. And I’m not looking forward to a brave new world where that information is increasingly accessed by people I don’t know and is used to try and sell me stuff. I get enough unsolicited suggestions for how I should spend my money as it is.

I have no issue with companies making billions off “friendship marketing.” I am a capitalist to my toes. (Though I am probably not going to be a very good target for their campaigns.)

But this data collection (voluntary as it may be) makes me queasy because:

It will probably be a matter of minutes before politicians and political causes catch on to the advantages of granular marketing. They will obviously use this accessible database for fund-raising, volunteer gathering, and get-out-the-vote drives – at a minimum.
How long do you think it will be before politicians and government agencies use this data in less benign ways?
What do you think the chances are that all this private and personal information you are consolidating on social media sites will not be hacked?

Okay, I’m old fashioned. But I fear that in the not-too-distant future, we will be reminiscing about what personal privacy used to mean.

About Emily R. Coleman

Dr. Emily R. Coleman is President of Competitive Advantage Marketing, Inc., a consultancy that specializes in helping companies extend their marketing reach and impact. Her hands-on experience extends from the development and integration of enterprise-wide marketing communications, through the creation and implementation of strategy to achieve business objectives, into the innovation of techniques to ensure that tactics support business strategy. Dr. Coleman can be reached at ecoleman@colemanmgt.com. She can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

The Politics of DNT

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Came across this brief June 8th, 2012 piece from the Wall Street Journal, “Romney Ads go Mobile.” The short version is that both the Romney & O’Bama campaigns are using data collected about online users (via an ad service) to target their messages to swing state voters. Makes perfect sense. Technical and marketing kudos to both teams. This lack of understanding really hurt McCain in the last election. Okay – so that’s about the technology – what does this have to do with Do Not Track?

This type of data collection and use is exactly what the DNT initiative is supposed to address. The data is not just used by advertisers, it is used by politicians, law enforcement, government and potentially insurance companies or other critical services businesses that can offer or deny us services. This is why organizations such as the ACLU and EFF are so actively involved in the DNT standard setting process. While the finger gets pointed at the behavioral targeting firms and ad engines, those in the civil rights community are far more concerned about these other uses of personal data. Ignorance is not bliss. Technology innovations outstrip our ability to understand all the long-term consequences – good or bad. Share or don’t share, but please be aware.

The Future of Social Media Marketing? (Republished)

Friday, June 8th, 2012

This is one that we really liked and wanted to pass along to you. It was originally posted on May 21, 2012 by Emily R. Coleman. Dr. Coleman talks from a user’s (and marketer’s) perspective as to her concerns about privacy how much data is being collected through Social Networks. I hope you find it thought provoking.

A friend recently sent me Evan Bailyn’s Outsmarting Social Media with the instructions to “Read it!” It’s an interesting book, well worth the time to look at. Bailyn has some thoughtful and practical suggestions and insights on marketing through Facebook and Twitter (although I think Facebook’s new Timeline has thrown him a curve).

What makes this granularity and personalization of influence so potent is that we decide who influences us, taking the guess work out of picking spokespersons. As we add more and more personal information to our personal social media accounts, and as Facebook and Google (whom Bailyn sees as the main competitors in this emerging arena) perfect algorithms for real-time and truly personalized search, marketers and advertisers will be able to deliver their pitches at the level of the individual. (In fact, Google has just rolled out its new Knowledge Graph or “semantic web” to make searches more personalized and intuitive.)