Sara M. Watson — The Uncanny Valley of Targeted Marketing. Scott Howe of Acxiom spoke at Harvard last week as part of the Topics in Privacy series.
I’ve been really interested to follow the steps Acxiom is taking to set an example in the advertising industry to engage more directly with consumers through aboutthedata.com. Howe talked at length about the philosophy behind the site, its success in the first couple months, and addressed some of the early criticisms. I’m encouraged by what Acxiom is doing, but I walked away from the talk with more questions than answers. Howe shared some statistics on the site after it first opened in September—they had 500K visitors in the first month, and only 2% of visitors have opted out as a result of logging in (I have to wonder, if that’s a[n intentional] design flaw, and that the option is buried or hard to find). Equinix Ad-IX Ecosystem Gains Global Momentum. Listen to Pandora, and It Listens Back.
Pandora, the Internet radio service, is plying a new tune.
After years of customizing playlists to individual listeners by analyzing components of the songs they like, then playing them tracks with similar traits, the company has started data-mining users’ musical tastes for clues about the kinds of ads most likely to engage them. “It’s becoming quite apparent to us that the world of playing the perfect music to people and the world of playing perfect advertising to them are strikingly similar,” says Eric Bieschke, Pandora’s chief scientist. Consider someone who’s in an adventurous musical mood on a weekend afternoon, he says. Www.turn.com/sites/default/files/docs/GlobalDigitalAudReport_FF2.pdf. For Facebook, Risk and Riches in User Data. Facebook Is Using You. Contacter la régie publicitaire AdServerPub.