President Obama's Plan to Destroy Advertising, Marketing, the Internet and All Other Forms of Digital Life - Shelly Palmer - MediaBizBloggers

The Obama administration has called for the creation of a Privacy Policy Office to assist in developing an Internet quotprivacy bill of rightsquot The US Commerce Department39s report stopped short of asking directly for privacy legislation But it is recommending a quotframeworkquot to protect people from data collectorsJust the name of this new office quotPrivacy Policy Officequot should be enough to scare any futurethinking marketer half to death And sadly there is no reason to be optimistic about what this office might recommend or how the Leadership will respondAfter all under what circumstances would you think it was OK to be watched The answer for everyone is going to be quotThere are NO circumstances where I would be willing to be watchedquot And if there is a circumstance under which you might agree to be watched the data collected from whatever behaviors you exhibit will be useless because people behave differently when they know they are being watchedAnd that39s just speaking about realtimeonline data If you were asked you probably would not agree to have your financial or medical data collected and aggregated When a creditreporting agency creates a profile based upon your billpaying habits it is really of no benefit to you You might argue that quotgoodquot citizens could be separated from quotbadquot citizens if such data were to be analyzed but the reality is that any minor mistake with the handling of that data will almost always inure to your detriment So why allow it to be used at all Your data is yours it is much easier just to say quotno thank you I prefer my privacy pleasequotNow the data that online advertising and marketing folks like to aggregate and analyze are data that illustrate how you behave and interact with your connected world what you watch what you click what you don39t click where you are who or what you are near etc If asked who in their right mind would agree to be watched I wouldn39t And I know it39s perfectly safe or is itCisco39s Retriever software sits inside of every Scientific Atlanta and Cisco settop box in the United States It knows exactly what channel the box is tuned to and for how long Yes Cisco more accurately your cable television provider quotknowsquot exactly what you watch They know it in a way that Nielsen Media Research never will They know what quotyouquot personally watch Not people like you not households not demographics youIf you are watching softcore porn on Cinemax at 200am as opposed to Ice Road Truckers or something on NatGeo they know If you have pixinpix going with Showtime and Science Channel at the same time they knowIf you click on an American Express ad on a Turner nonnews site like NASCARcom and then visit another Turner site like PGAcom they will show you a followup ad Why Because they knowIf you send a Gmail to a friend about fly fishing then search a few sites on the same subject they really knowWho are quottheyquot At the moment quottheyquot are a bunch of extremely large log files with aggregated data of millions and millions of users that are parsed by software attempting to figure out how to serve you the most relevant advertising and content This actually does have a benefit for you and for the businesses that are aggregating the data You get computer help sorting out the overwhelming amount of information that is available in the Information Age and the businesses get computer help sorting out how to allocate their advertising dollarsAdditionally you get the benefit of seeing the kind of content that you are most likely to enjoyThe Administration the Leadership and every ambitious politician will tell you that all of this comes at a terrible cost Although no one can give even one concrete example of how using data to drive relevant content to a consumer has ever hurt anyone in any way But why confuse this issue with facts It39s much easier to spread FUD Fear Uncertainty and DoubtIf you truly spy on people you will get accurate data After all if you don39t know you are being watched you just do life as it actually happens On the other hand if you tell people that they are being quotwatchedquot which is not exactly accurate but is a great shorthand way to scare the hell out of everyone they will quotactquot for whoever is watching This renders the data all but uselessquotTheyquot Who ever quottheyquot are quotWatchedquot I wonder who is quotwatchingquot These are terribly scary unfortunate terms that everyone is going to interpret as evilThe war on datadriven creative and advertising has started Because this is a complex issue it is being thrown into the same bucket with the data collectors who want to inform insurance companies that you have a genetic defect and should render you uninsurableBecause this issue is so complex and because privacy is such an emotional subject there is a real danger that the data needs of the advertising and marketing industry will get caught in the crossfire In fact there is a real possibility that it will become a target inandof itselfThis is a real emergency It is time for the advertising and marketing business to start to advertise and market itself The brand brief is simple Make datadriven content acceptable to the American people and make the politicians look stupid for trying to scare everyone about Big Brother when they should be concentrating on securing our actual privacy If we don39t get this one right the datadriven advertising business probably has less than a year to live Let39s get it rightShelly Palmer is the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer a daily show featuring news you can use about technology media ampamp entertainment He is the author of Television Disrupted The Transition from Network to Networked TV 2008 New York House Press and the upcoming Get Digital Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy 2009 Lake House Press Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences NY the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards For information about Get Digital Classes visit httpwwwshellypalmercomseminars Watch Digital Life with Shelly Palmer Tuesdays at 10p ET on WNBC39s NY Nonstop httpwwwshellypalmercomdigitallifeRead all Shelly39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Shelly Palmer ReportCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerMediaBizBloggers is an openthought leadership blog platform for media marketing and advertising professionals companies and organizations To contribute contact Jackmediadvisorygroupcom The opinions expressed in MediaBizBloggerscom are not those of Media Advisory Group its employees or other MediaBizBloggerscom contributors Media Advisory Group accepts no responsibility for the views of MediaBizBloggers authors

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President Obama's Plan to Destroy Advertising, Marketing, the Internet and All Other Forms of Digital Life - Shelly Palmer - MediaBizBloggers

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