Targeting Bad Behavior: The Truth Behind Behavioral Targeting - Jeff Einstein - MediaBizBlogger

Current behavioral targeting (BT) controversies among consumer advocacy groups and government agencies focus primarily on how these aggressive new technologies affect consumer privacy (and there's plenty of cause for concern among privacy advocates and legislators alike). But I'd like to focus this article instead on how behavioral targeting affects advertisers -- where the proverbial buck to fund BT campaigns literally begins and ends.

So here's my first BT question to advertisers and their agency proxies: What the hell are you thinking? Where do you find any evidence whatsoever to suggest that subsequent layers of targeting technology do anything except raise costs, drive down performance, and reinforce the one thing that we already know for certain about on-demand media: that no one demands more advertising?

Contrary to industry claims, behavioral targeting isn't marketing at all; it's virtual stalking, a predatory behavior that relies almost exclusively on stealth (because no one would tolerate the overt collection of sensitive behavioral data). How desperate are we that we feel the need to lurk in the shadows like digital stalkers and hunt our prey? Desperate enough apparently to risk association with a technology that's already squarely aligned in the crosshairs of lawmakers, government agencies and consumer advocacy groups alike. The most relevant question for advertisers to ask themselves about BT is not how to make it work, but what to do after it fails to work. Where do advertisers turn next?

Advocates of BT claim that consumers want relevant ads. But that's patently false and self serving, not to mention utterly absurd (right up there on theAlice in Wonderland index with the myth of consumer demand). In fact, I would challenge any proponent of BT to identify even a single consumer advocacy group that embraces it, or even accepts the notion that consumers want ads at all, relevant or otherwise. No, this is clearly not at all about what consumers want. And it's clearly not about what actually works – not when average clickthrough rates are 15-20 times lower than they were less than a decade ago, when the first BT technologies appeared. This is only about what BT providers and agencies can sell to advertisers, the guys who foot the bill. And advertisers who buy BT are buying a pregnant pig in a poke, a porcine technology loaded with more legal liabilities than thalidomide and tobacco combined.

The fact that so many marketing and advertising trade associations have suddenly rallied around BT to ward off potential government regulation of the digital marketing industry is not only a measure of our desperation, but a measure of our profound disconnect from reality. To think that we can justify such hyper-aggressive behavior as a means to initiate or sustain meaningful relationships stinks of Orwellian Newspeak. BT will make industry faux pas like spam and malware seem in comparison like choir boys, and in the end the only ones whose behavior will be targeted is our own -- when we suddenly find ourselves subpoenaed to testify before Congress or a judge and jury. We are playing with fire.

Legal liabilities notwithstanding, what evidence out there suggests that BT works for advertisers (or for anyone except the agencies and BT technology providers)? What evidence can agencies and BT technology providers offer to justify the added commitment, expense and significant risks associated with their products and services? Advertisers, before you throw more good money after bad, ask yourselves how BT suddenly makes knowable what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – a mainstay of quantum physics theory -- says we can't know with any certainty. Financier George Soros discusses his variation on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (what he called the Human Uncertainty Principle)in his book, "Alchemy of Finance":

"People's understanding of the world in which they live cannot correspond to the facts and be complete and coherent at the same time. Insofar as people's thinking is confined to the facts, it is not sufficient to reach decisions; and insofar as it serves as the basis of decisions, it cannot be confined to the facts. The human uncertainty principle applies to both thinking and reality. It ensures that our understanding is often incoherent and always incomplete and introduces an element of genuine uncertainty - as distinct from randomness - into the course of events."The human uncertainty principle bears a strong resemblance to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which holds that the position and momentum of quantum particles cannot be measured at the same time. But there is an important difference. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle does not influence the behavior of quantum particles one iota; they would behave the same way if the principle had never been discovered. The same is not true of the human uncertainty principle. Theories about human behavior can and do influence human behavior. Marxism had a tremendous impact on history, and market fundamentalism is having a similar influence today."

The observer effect described above states that the very act of observing something (or someone) changes the object of our observation, an effect not lost on Internet founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee in recent comments on BT…

"We use the internet without a thought that a third party would know what we have just clicked on. Yet the URLs [webpages] people use reveal a huge amount about their lives, loves, hates and fears. This is extremely sensitive information.

"People use the web in a crisis, when wondering whether they have a sexually transmitted disease, or cancer, when wondering if they are homosexual and whether to talk about it…to discuss political views."

According to Berners-Lee, we"use the internet to inform ourselves as voters in a democracy…we use the internet to decide what is true and what is not.

"We use the internet for healthcare and social interaction.

"There will be a huge commercial pressure to release this data,"he said."The principle should be that it is not to be collected in the first place."

The implications are clear: Consumers will change their behavior if they suspect that sensitive data will be shared with third-party interests.

Nothing about BT makes it immune to the otherwise immutable laws of physics. Instead, we should recognize it for what it is: pure, unadulterated, high-tech snake oil -- an arrogant subset of the same convoluted logic that suggests that who you talk to is somehow more important than what you have to say.

All of the above notwithstanding, the potential for abuse inherent in BT is staggering, and far outweighs any presumed benefits. And speaking of benefits, where exactly is the BT upside, a 17% lift on an already subatomic .2% clickthrough? Advertisers, get serious: BT does nothing for you except insult your customers, drain your budget, and potentially injure your brand in the process. Much better instead to pause and reconsider our obsessions with targeting technologies -- all of which have done nothing in aggregate but conspire to drive down performance and drive up costs.

Much better instead to reinvest your time and money in the fundamentals of a good message and better online destination experiences. Challenge your agency to explore and learn how -- in an on-demand media universe -- to let your audience target you.

About Jeff Einstein and the Brothers Einstein

Jeff Einstein is one-half of the Brothers Einstein, a creative strategy and branding boutique. The Brothers Einstein work with select rapid-growth clients to help define and execute healthy brand strategies in a toxic media environment.

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