Revolt against ad targeting?

Everybody who thinks that the future of online advertising is ever more intrusive, targeted formats should sit up and take notice of recent events in California.

Here Facebook is being sued in a class action lawsuit for it’s failed Beacon project. The claim is that Facebook violated end user privacy - even that of non users of its social network - and as such this action could become an important indicator that there is an end of the road for how much targeting, people are willing to take.

This is good and bad depending on view point.

It’s good because it shows that people do in fact care about their privacy and is looking to protect it (even though you could expect that a class action lawsuit against Facebook merely has a strategy to settle and get some money from Zuckerberg & co). And it’s good because it could foster real innovation in the product and content offerings - and not just new ways of inventing intrusiveness.

It’s bad for companies relying on massive scaling of traffic and subsequent monetization through hyper targeting. Because this shows the audience as less likely to tag along. Or in other words: If you’re banking on getting a lot of traffic and monetizing that very effectively through advertising, you might want to reassess your business model. But then again, you could see that as a challenge too.

Vad NU! is a consultancy company owned by Mads Kristensen and specialized in helping clients take advantage of the business opportunities created by new media. Click to learn how I can help you and your company.