Google shying away from behavioural targeting
Google's vice president of product management for advertising, Susan Wojcicki, said behavioural targeting is not something that organisation has participated in, for a variety of reasons.
Wojcicki told reporters at a briefing that she believes that task-based information at the time (of a user's search) is the most relevant information to what they are looking at.
Google always wants to be very careful about what information would or would not be used, she said.
At issue is not only users' sense of privacy, she concluded, but the success of Google's existing business tying web searches to related ad links.
In my view whilst the process of delivering search results tailored to a persons online behaviour is to a large extent valid, indeed as a search marketer the prospect of providing results to people searching for “motor insurance” but being able to modify the results so that under 21’s don’t get my ad, is very compelling. The issue resides more with how that data is stored, who has access to it and how it can be used – after all if you are anything like me, I’m fed up with the amount of banner ads (that I don’t look at), pop ups, junk mail online and off line and don’t want to be subjected to more however it might be disguised.
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03.09.2007.
