How users perceive ad targeting...
The newly published TRUSTe report on consumer perception towards targeting has some interesting statistics.
- 71% of respondents were aware that their browsing history is collected for targeting purposes
- 40% of those polled are familiar with the term "behavioral targeting"
- 42% said they would sign up for an online registry to prevent advertisers from tracking them
Now compare the above numbers with the following from the same survey
- 72% said ads are annoying if not relevant to their needs
- 87% users said that only about 1 in 4 ads are well targeted towards them
The numbers are surprising to me and lead to an interesting dilemma for ad providers. On one hand our consumers demand more relevant advertising, but they are also reluctant to share information that is required to deliver personalized advertising. At an industry level, we need to do a better job at educating users about how targeting works and the way data is collected. Amazon's recommendation engine is a great example of targeting done right that is received positively by the users.
At Microsoft, we do not use any information that can be tied back to personally identifiable data about the users. All the data we collect for targeting is anonymized. We are also working on a feature that will let users opt-out of Microsoft's ad targeting network. Stay tuned for more details on that.
