In a few weeks the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will hold a town hall meeting to examine the public policy issues involved in “online behavioral advertising.”
The FTC describes online behavioral advertising as “involv[ing] the collection of information about a consumer’s activities online – including the searches the consumer has conducted, the Web pages visited, and the content the consumer has viewed. The information is then used to target advertising to the consumer that is intended to reflect the consumer’s interests, and thus increase the effectiveness of the advertising.” Sounds like a consumer benefit.
But some people do not differentiate between privacy and customer service and, worse, seek different rules for the online world than in the analog world. And this thinking leads them to want to eliminate what many would consider good customer service.
For some time, online merchants typically observe activity by means of a “cookie” (i.e., a small bit of text, stored on a computer’s hard disk that allows a Web site to store information on the computer for later use). For almost the same amount of time, computer users have been able to turn off the cookies, hence preventing their use and, presumably, securing one’s privacy.
Additionally, many Web sites state that cookies will be used, so this collection and use of information is no different than what might occur now when you shop in a retail store. Careful observation and recording of a particular customer’s likes, dislikes, preferences and purchases would not be uncommon in a store that stakes its future on good customer service. Thus, it’s hard to see how the online shopping experience varies much from the physical world.
For example, a good salesperson in a clothing store might listen carefully to customers’ comments about a product, recall their names, and even keep note cards for reference when the customer returns to provide the customer with a perfect experience (targeted advertising), and incidentally to increase the chance of a sale.
“Collection of information about a consumer’s activities” can sound so sinister and yet it happens to us and around us all the time to our benefit. The rush to create a new set of rules and philosophies simply because “technology” is part of the mix is a misdirected exercise.
Snooping or spying is one thing, but knowing your customers and providing them with what they need – that is just good service.