Recently, Reprise Media Managing Partners Joshua Stylman and Peter Hershberg wrote an article for AdvertisingAge, tackling the ramifications of the Justice Department’s interest in search terms and URLs from the major engines.
The piece examines the trend toward personalization online, which is (generally speaking) good for the user experience, good for marketers and good for the engines. However, it can also be bad for user privacy. Here’s a snip:
“Expanding data collection Marketers also reap the benefits that come with knowing more about their audiences — whether it’s learning what offers and promotions are most likely to elicit a user response or knowing what times of day, sites and publications best appeal to their target consumers.
However, there’s an important caveat: As data get richer, so does the potential for infringement upon user privacy.
One way around this is for search engines to resist the temptation to look at data on an individual level and rather keep their focus confined to the aggregate. The benefits of doing so are twofold: The potential for litigation, both on a private and government level, is reduced; and the credibility of marketers’ messages and user trust are retained. Luckily for search engines, both of these also happen to be good for the bottom line.
That said, if the government is successful in this and similar litigation, the final decision may not be up to the search engines. While the Justice Department’s current request is simply for search terms and URLs, precedent has been set for the government to get more aggressive about the type and scope of information they’re requesting.”
Stylman and Hershberg also explain how folks’ actions online form “the thread that potentially connects all of their queries together” in the first place, leading on the one hand to more effective marketing (and on the other to the potential for abuse). Check out the rest at AdAge.
