BYOD – Bring Your Own Demographics
by Elizabeth
For the very first time, today I visited an ad-supported blog and noticed that with 100% accuracy, I was served ads for things I was looking at over the past few weeks – business and personal – all mixed together. Cool, right? Relevant right? Well not exactly. Too late boys & girls – I’ve moved on. Looking for different things now (bought/renewed all I was going to).
Being me, I decided to click on the DAA’s Ad Choice icon and then through to Google’s ad profile/privacy manager page to check things out. I will say that having the icon does make it easier to find, review and edit your Google profile. For that much I am grateful – thank you Google and the DAA.
But wait. Much to my surprise I found out I am 35 – 44 year old male! Really? Guess I’ll need a few things – maybe some ballroom jeans? I’d order up some “online goodies” if I knew what they were (even Wikipedia, doesn’t know). What do you think – a bearskin or zebra shag rug for my bachelor pad? They don’t assign a marital status, but what are the odds that I’m married if I’m looking for a job, totally into money, playing with electronics and hanging out online with my 1500 closet friends?
My Google Ad Profile as of Today:
Bottom line, Google’s ad network does not know me.
My categories are accurate, but their profiling assumptions need some work. Am I interested in computers & electronics or do I work in the IT industry? As a marketer, I think that matters – it goes to intent to buy – or not. I’m not looking for a job, I use job listings as triangulation points to see what industries are equipping mobile workers with tablets and smartphones (it’s becoming a recruitment perk and helps mitigate the other BYOD issues). Somehow they missed all my travel research – now those ads I might actually respond to.
Because online consumer privacy management is so binary (track/do not track) and most businesses are not yet using our Choice browser, I guess I’ll just hit Johnny’s Cigar Bar, hang with the boys plan a 45th birthday golf trip to Hawaii while I wait for my online, transgender surgery to be reversed. Later…
Posted in: BYOD, Choice, Personalization, Privacy, Uncategorized, Who: User Information