Cookie Monster: or Personalised Marketing and How I Learned to Tolerate It

While finishing work for one of our clients, which involved insurance research, I realized I had become inundated with adverts for insurance; my email, my personal email, YouTube, any website I visited; all were plastered with insurance ads of all kinds. Personalised ads, I was told. Over the ongoing months, the level of saturation dimmed, but I still receive them. Personalised ads, I was reminded, don’t worry about it; but to be honest, I kind of do. After a little discussion in the studio, I thought I’d write my two cents down and see how much change I get.

Personalised ads work by having online companies analysing a person’s browsing data – what websites they see – and tailoring their adverts to match.

From online banners to mobile TV to more traditional mailers and postcards, personalised marketing ads have gone from strength to strength in recent years, with both companies and customers trumpeting the cause. Online retailers report an increased response rate to their ads, whilst simultaneously reducing paper waste and bringing costs down on advertising across the board. Customers benefit with gifts and incentives to keep loyal to the brand, creating a stronger relationship between customer and company, whilst also being provided with the kind of products that would benefit them.

These ads are geared towards you: your likes, your wants. They cut out the time to search high and low online for something, when, if you pay attention to your peripheral, the product you’re after is being shown to you. Based on your previous history, these firms tailor-make advertising for you. They are the perfect form of advertising: all benefits, no drawbacks.

I, not for the first time, have to disagree. I’ve always had a real disdain for them, as I’ve always been aware that I’m being watched and analyzed; it’s tantamount to having a stranger rummage through your fridge to know what fast food menus to shove through your letterbox; you’re still getting the junk mail, you’ve just had your privacy violated to do so.

The parameters for personalization are too narrow, as they only take into account what the user is searching and previously bought, with the customers’ intentions not taken into account. In other words, if a user buys a hammer, he’ll still receive personalized marketing regarding hammers every time he logs on, or until he clears his cookies. This again emphasizes the lack of personalization, just the feeling of having ones actions monitored and exploited.

The Government was so concerned over the misuse of personal data by these ‘behaviourally targeted ads’ that in 2010 The Office of Fair Trading was brought in to research the relatively young practice. The OFT’s concern over privacy issues and the consumers worry regarding online targeting based on previous purchases and browsing behaviour led the OFT to call for sites to clearly identify which are personalised ads based on customers web browsing data.

While there are objections to the ads over privacy issues, the OFT report also found that there are benefits to consumers from personal marketing. I have no doubt that personalised advertising is the future, and in fact I welcome it – as long as the privacy issues are dealt with properly, with more clarity regarding the practices companies use to gather information and how that information is used, the dangers and worries could be substantially limited.

Obviously, it would be impossible to have the specified location-based ads without giving the firms information about your whereabouts, or being offered alternatives online that reflect your tastes without allowing companies to see your browsing history, but this relationship has to be consensual: the consumer needs to be informed when their data is being tracked and give them the opportunity to opt out. Inroads have already been built in this regard, as it is illegal for a company to store cookies on a computer system for the purposes of storing information without notifying the user, but it needs to go further.

I’m not an alarmist, and I hope I haven’t given you that impression; I believe in personalised marketing, we just need to know that we have an option to give, not just having companies take. As with all marketing, we need to know we’re getting a good deal.