Do Track or Do Not Track, that is the question

Not being a politician or industry lobbyist, I probably shouldn't even tackle this question, so here's a comic that sums up my mood at the moment:

Admittedly, there is a certain amount of spin here because, of course, the goal of any privacy legislation is to keep individual's personal information, well, private - and that's a good thing. My point is simply that we are bombarded by meaningless messages all day long. Wouldn't it be nice if the ads that we saw and heard actually meant something to us? Most people turn to Amazon for an example of the right way to "advertise". When Amazon sends you an email, it seems more like a friendly note from someone that knows you because they are suggesting books and music that you really are likely to buy. What if all the ads we saw online were for companies and products that were pertinent to us? In a perfect world it's a win-win.

So much time and money is wasted in "blasting" ads out to the public. I can't speak for general advertisers but even direct marketers can be thrilled with response rates in the single digits. Be it direct mail or email. With Google's paid-per-click ads, even the best performing terms can easily be a fraction of a percent when comparing clicks to impressions. Such waste, not just in money but in the brainpower it takes to filter out all the irrelevant crap. And speaking of how we process things, I believe most searchers' brains have been trained to completely ignore the paid Google ads and focus solely on the "natural" searches. While sophisticated, targeted ads based on a person's web activity might be more expensive, the return we can expect from these truly targeted ads will surely outweigh the cost. As with the Amazon model, when people go to the websites that are using the targeted ad technology the visitor will see that banner ad as more "news" than "ad" and will begin to pay attention and click thru more frequently.

As for the privacy issue, that's a tough one. I remember when Amazon began targeting their emails and web ads. Initially I was "creeped out" by the "invasion" but eventually I came to appreciate it for it's value. Perhaps my biggest fear is that politicians will craft a bill that sounds good but will be so unwieldy that the online marketers find it impossible comply. If that happens, it will be a step back for the internet. Personally, I hope what the industry is doing to self regulate will be enough and will quell the political desire for government intervention but as Carla Rover at DigiDay writes, is it too little, too late? Finally, as it turns out we may have a ways to go before we will be really collecting meaningful data anyway. Joel Stein recently did very thorough research into this in a recent article in Time about how all our personal data is (and is not collected).

Smarter people than I will be debating this in the upcoming weeks and months so you'll get more information than you care to know about the pros and cons of the different bills. I just hope that politics doesn't win out over common sense. Feel free to weigh in on this and if you like the comic, you're welcome to reuse it with a little shout-out back to me.