Quote:
Originally Posted by PhormUKPRteam
Hi all
Hope you all had a good Easter? With reference to the above discussion, the Register article in the Guardian neatly highlights the two central issues here: protecting online privacy and needing ad funding to pay for Internet services. Of course people are concerned about the trade off they think they have to make between getting a personalised service on the one hand and giving up personal data on the other - we agree that they shouldn't have to make that pay off. So are you happy to be served targeted ads by companies that use your personal data and store it for more than 12 months before it is even anonymised? Surely it is better to have a system that stores absolutely no personal information, no IP addresses and no browsing histories - like us or not, that's a better privacy environment than you currently get.
Online ad targeting is not going away; something the Guardian confirms in its statement. The reason that we've had such an enthusiastic response from the companies that we meet is that the Phorm system can earn ISPs and publishers - big and small - more money to plough back into the services you receive today - most of them for free. If not ad funding, then what other way is the Internet going to be paid for? Most Internet publishers have abandoned subscriptions because not enough people are actually prepared to pay when it comes down to it.
As always, if you have any queries or want any more information, visit www.webwise.com or www.phorm.com |
How about this for a compromise: Instead of VM monitoring my browsing habits (which is actually very inaccurate. Just because I visit a website doesn't mean I have any interest in it*), how about asking the customer to voluntarily supply the necessary metrics to VM (I could describe my interests (say Electronics, Spurs, etc)? At the end of the day so long as you deliver an appropriately-targetted advert on behalf of your clients, it shouldn't matter to you how the data is collated.
* Example 1: When the BNP/heroin photo news article came out, I wanted to see it for myself. One of the sites I tried was the BNP itself. That doesn't mean I want to see BNP-related ads in the future. Example 2: My partner uses my connection via router and laptop. There is no way for VM to differentiate between which computer is doing the browsing, so it is just as likely to serve me Tampax adverts instead of my girlfriend.