How To Opt Out from Behavioral Targeting Networks

Behavioral Targeting has become the buzz words these days. Behavioral targeting Vendors are spreading like wildfire. It is become hard to keep up with all the vendors in the market and find out who is tracking your behavior.

Today visitors, when they visit a site participating in a behavioral targeting network, are automatically opted-in to Behavioral Targeting. The consent to participate in Behavioral Targeting is mentioned in privacy policy of the site, which most of the people don’t read (when was the last time you read privacy policy of a site), and also visitors do not have choice if they want to use the site.
Even though most of the time tracking is done anonymously, using a third party anonymous cookie, Behavioral Targeting has raised privacy concerns. Most of the time these privacy concerns are unfound but still there are chances when it they can become an issue.

To ease consumers concerns and give them control over their tracking, Network Advertising Initiate (NAI) has developed an Opt-out Tool. This tool allows consumers to see what Advertising networks have dropped cookie on their computer and hence are tracking their behavior. If a person does not want any network(s) to track his/her behavior the visitor can “opt out” of the network using this tool.
Opting out of a network does not mean a visitor will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which a visitor opted out will no longer deliver ads based on the visitor’s behavior and/or preferences.
One caveat is that opt-out (using this tool) is based on third party cookies. What that means is that third party cookies are dropped on a visitor’s computer from the networks that he/she opt-outs from. When the visitor visits a site that is part of the network, network code reads the cookies and if it finds an opt-out cookie on the computer then if does not track or show targeted (behavioral) ads. If the visitor deletes the cookie or uses a software which deletes the cookies then visitor will be automatically opted-in again and he/she will have to repeat the process of opting out.
I believe that NAI should push this initiative even further and allow consumers to opt-out directly from the ads that are being served based on behavioral data or from the sites where the data is being collected. I am predicting that this year we might see a push in that direction. I also believe there will be opt-in networks instead of opt-outs (I wrote about my proposed solution when discussingGoogle DoubleClick privacy concerns, networks that will allow more control to visitors and reward users for participating in these networks (something similar to MyPoints, which asked for your preferences and then emailed you offers or ads based on those preferences and then rewarded you for clicking on those email offers).
Here are the networks that are part of NAI (I will write about these networks in future articles).

aCerno
Advertising.com
AlmondNet
Atlas
DoubleClick
Revenue Science
Safecount
SpecificMEDIA
24/7 Real Media
[x+1] (formerly Poindexter Systems)
Yahoo! Ad Network
TACODA Audience Networks

Here is the screenshot of the tool.
To use the tool visit NAI Website.

I tested it on two computers and was surprised to find out that I did not have network cookies from DoubleClick and Yahoo ad networks on either of the computers. I don’t believe that. So I don’t think the tool is fully functional, I will test various network in few days and report back if I find anything odd. For now, I have left all my cookies as it is because I find the value in behaviorally targeted ads, I will only opt-out for testing purposes. When you guys try can you let me know if you are seeing the same thing?

Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting Predictions for 2008

Last year I made 5 predictions about Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting. I was pleased to find that all of them came true by the middle of the year.
Now it’s a New Year and time to make fresh prediction about Web Analytics and Behavioral Targeting. So here are the 5 predictions for 2008

1. Offsite Analytics – With proliferation of Widgets and Rich Media ads a need to measure, understand and optimize the user interaction with widgets and Rich Media ads will become important. Web Analytics will include offsite measurements i.e. user interactions with widgets and Rich Media Ads
2. Google Analytics – Google Analytics will mature further and start taking customers from other analytics tools like Omniture, WebTrends, Clicktracks etc. The configuration will become little complicated (and hence need for Google Analytics Expertise will grow) and Google will also expose more APIs to allow companies to pull and merge different kinds of data with Web Analytics Data.
3. Mobile Analytics – Mobile sites and mobile advertisings gains momentum. Mobile Analytics will be become a requirement to understand how the sites and advertising is performing. Currently you can either use log files, WAP gateway logs if you are one of the mobile carriers (this is what I did back in 2001 -2002) or use services from Amethon. This year we will see more players in mobile Analytics. The reporting will become better than what has been offered to date.
4. Online and Offline Data Integration – A need for integrating offline data and web analytics data will become a priority. ZeroDash1 founders saw this need in the market and hence started this company. More companies will push in this direction including web analytics vendors. Oracle bought a Web Analytics companies (I predicted this also). I can see them integrating CRM and Web Analytics into one package.
5. Behavioral Targeting – Behavioral Targeting will continue to grow this year, however, there will be greater push for protecting consumer privacy. The privacy concerns will result in two things:
   1. Clear instructions (or links) on Behaviorally Targeted Ads that will allow behaviorally targeted visitors to opt-out of Behaviorally Targeted advertising
   2. Opt-in system – Some networks (maybe new ones) will move towards opt-in rather than opt-out (I favor opt-in over opt-out as I wrote in past. So I am making this prediction that this year networks will pay attention to it). A new types of networks or services might come up which will allow users to be an active participant in BT and control who can use their online behavioral data and how they can use it.

What do you think?

Behavioral Targeting and Affiliate Marketing

Behavioral Targeting (BT) provides a great opportunity for Affiliate Marketers and Networks to reach right customer and increase the conversion.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is way for advertisers to reach potential customers and only pay when a visitor takes some predefined action. Predefined actions range from a sale to registration. Recently Pay Per Click has also been added to affiliate programs. Generally, the website (publisher) places an advertisements on their site and when a predefined action results by a visitors referred (clicked) by that ad, the advertiser pays the publisher a % or a fixed amount. I won’t go into further details of affiliate marketing but you get the idea.

As you know now that one of the major benefits of Affiliate programs is that an advertiser gets an inventory on publisher’s site without paying anything. Advertiser only pays when a visitor becomes a lead or a customer. This is like sales people on commission only program.

However there is even bigger benefit than just getting free inventory. The ability to put an ad serving (and tracking) code on these affiliate sites (publishers). Just think about how many sites Amazon, eBay, commission junction, linkshare etc. have their codes on. Amazon was the one of the early advertiser who realized the power of Affiliate programs. Google, not matter how you look at it is also a type of affiliate program, in most case advertisers get free inventory and only pay when a click happens (and now Google has pay-per-action program which is true affiliate program).

The widespread tracking code on the internet provides a huge opportunity for affiliate networks and advertisers (like eBay, Amazon) to engage in behavioral targeting and reach potential customer with the right message at the right time.
Let’s take a look at a scenario to further understand how this can work.
A user visits eBay and looks at certain products and bids on a camera but lost the bid. Next day eBay gets another seller who is selling the same camera. How can eBay reach the user who lost the bid? Well one way is they can send her an email (She might not be actively checking my email). Second is tell the about that camera when she come back to eBay (that might be too late). Third is they can use their affiliate site to put that camera offer right in front of her if she happens to visit any of the affiliate site (and there are a lot of them). She has shown interest in the camera so why not use your affiliate code to put the right offer in front of her. The code is right there make use of it. Some might argue this is crossing the privacy line but that is whole another issue to discuss.
Amazon already does similar targeting by its Omakase links but it is not true behavioral targeting. They use the keywords or browsing history which goes back since they day they were born. I see offers from Amazon that are not even relevant to me anymore, they were at one time but Amazon still thinks I am interested even though I have not clicked on those products in years.

Affiliate networks like Commission Junction and Link Share are in great position (eBay uses Commission Junction). They know what kind of sites a visitor (or customer) visits, what kind of products/offers he/she is interested in by looking at their click or purchase behavior. Can’t they just automatically put offer s/products in front of customers?

The way most of the affiliate networks work today is not very efficient for any of the parties involved. They need to step it up a bit. Here are my thoughts on all parties involved how Behavioral Targeting (BT) can help them.

Publishers: A publisher has to decide what advertisers they want to sign up for, this is their guess on what will work. I have spent months trying to figure out what will work for my customers. Also then the link generation process is so difficult. Say a publishers sign up as an affiliate for Resaturant.com (check out SeattleIndian.com, it has restaurant.com banner), now the publisher has to go find the products that are relevant to their customers if they want to target with right banners. In this case maybe it is restaurants in Seattle. It is such a pain that majority of publishers don’t want to deal with it and just put a generic banner. Won’t it be nice if CJ or Restaurant.com in this case was able to put the right offer based on Geography and other browsing behaviors on either CJ network or Restaurant.com site itself?

Customers (visitors): Customers (Visitors) don’t have time, they will only click on ad which will be relevant to them. A generic message from Resturant.com or eBay or Amazon is not enough. Show them a message which will make them click right away. If a customer has already been to Restaurant.com and looked for Indian Restaurants in Seattle and now when the customer is in Seattle (Geo location) surfing on this affiliate site, why show her a generic message? Why not show her offers for Indian Restaurants?

Advertisers: Even if advertisers are getting free inventory now, it is not going to last. Inventory is limited, publishers are going to replace their banner with something that will make them money (AdSense has replaced several affiliates). So grab this opportunity. Put relevant message, gone are the days when generic message would have worked (did they ever worked though). Use the browsing behavior on your site (or a behavioral ad network, your affiliate network will have to offer behavioral targeting soon) to target the right messages.

Affiliate Networks: Why are they still operating using the old model where they make the publisher s guess what products or offers will work for them (Google is following this model too with their pay-per-action model). Why can’t you let publisher put some generic code on their site and then serve ads based on user behaviors? I have seen a lot ads sitting on a publisher site not generating any sales, few clicks, who is benefitting from all this? Not the affiliate network. Not the publisher. Advertiser? May be. Visitor? May be. Now if you had placed a right message (determined from user past behavior) then chances are that all of the parties involved will benefit. It is worth trying. Test it. Use the data you collect, the data from advertisers’ site, the data from publishers’ site. It is not going to be easy but it is doable. Acquire a behavioral targeting company, use their technology and network too.

Affiliate marketers and networks have a huge opportunity to cash in using Behavioral Targeting. They just have to move fast.

Comments, Questions?

Here are some more posts on Behavioral Targeting.

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