Internet Privacy: Behavioral Targeted Ads And Your Customers
by LFG
Filed under Privacy Policy
Do your customers want to receive web advertising tailored to their interests? Well, it depends on who you ask and how you ask the question.
According to a study released by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, most US Residents don’t want to have web advertisements tailored to their interests. 86% of the 1000 respondents said no when asked if online ad vendors should deliver targeted ads by tracking customers’ behavior across multiple websites.
Ironically, a survey by TRUSTe in March found that two out of three consumers were aware that their browsing information may be collected by a third party for advertising purposes. This survey polled over a thousand consumers focusing on online users.
Just as in any survey, the sample group and the questions asked have a large impact on the results produced.
In the first study mentioned, the survey didn’t target online users. So the group surveyed may never have experienced the simple pleasure of having Amazon.com give a recommendation for other books they might like to read. But it did focus on the fact that the customers’ behavior was being tracked over multiple websites. The thought of being tracked in general would scare off most people.
In the TRUSTe survey, they did target online users, but their questions were much vaguer. It talked about being “aware” and had “may be collected”. Being aware and knowing exactly how that information is used can lead to very different answers. But if you are a business owner yourself, you might not object so much to your information being collected since you know how valuable that information can be to creating new products, figuring out who your true customers are and getting at the core of what they are looking for in your products and in complimentary products to yours.
But in the end, isn’t internet privacy really about allowing customers and users to control what information is and isn’t collected about them whether it be through an opt-in or opt-out?
Your website privacy policy plays a key role in your relationship with your customers. To learn more about privacy policies and other website legal documents, just click this link now.
