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12.21.07
ISP-Based Behavioral Targeting
 By
Anil Batra
In an article titled Watching What You See on the Web Wall Street Journal talks about ISP (Internet Service Provider) based behavioral targeting.
ISP based behavioral targeting idea has been kicked around for some time and NebuAd is one of the first companies that made a product known as "deep-packet inspection boxes" for ISPs to track user behavior online and then serve ads based on these behaviors.
This kind of targeting enables ISP's to be a player in growing behavioral targeting market and generate a new stream of revenue.
This kind of technology is beyond simply using anonymous tracking. ISPs do have a lot more information than just the browsing behavior. They have name, location, age, social security number (SSN). They know what time users login to their machine, when is the internet being used, what kind of sites are visited at what times, which sites provided information before a user made a purchase etc etc. This is far more information than companies like Revenue Science or Tacoda has and obviously can provide better targeting than Revenue Science or Tacoda can do.
However this also raises far more privacy concerns than companies like Revenue Science and Tacoda raise.
According to the article:
The technology does raise privacy issues. The Internet-service providers often know other information about consumers, such as their names, locations and age and income ranges, which can be very valuable to potential advertisers, especially when combined with Web browsing habits. "Some of these [Internet equipment] guys are traveling in dangerous territory," says Emily Riley, an advertising analyst with Jupiter Research. "Should one company have all of that data in one place? It's a little troubling."
Other than user privacy there is another huge issue that this article did not talk about. In a network like Revenue Science or Tacoda publishers and advertisers (data providers) have to opt-in to participate. If a publisher/advertiser does not want to enable advertisers to use their data then they simply do not participate in the network. Advertisers can also choose to just use their site's data to be used to only power their own advertisements. E.g Delta airlines can choose to participate in a retargeting campaign on a network like Revenue Science. They can retarget all the users who viewed fares to a particular destination but left the site without buying the ticket. To do so they will allow the network to collect information on all those users whom they want to target and then only allow the network to use those behaviors (users) to target their ads only. Alaska airlines cannot use Revenue Science and target their ads based on the behaviors on Delta airlines network. This is an explicit agreement between the publisher/advertiser and network.
However in case of ISP based targeting; data providers (publishers, advertisers and other sites) don't have to opt in. They are opted in by default. Using the example above, a user's behavior on Delta airlines site (and also information about who clicked on Delta's ads across the internet) is captured without Delta Airlines explicit approval. Now, ISP's can use that information to power Alaska airlines advertisements and drive all those users, who could have purchased their tickets from Delta, to Alaska airlines. I am sure Delta won't be happy about it. This applies to every single site on the internet, they do not have an option their data will be used and in most cases to power competitors ads, this is a huge deal. I think it is, what do you think? I am sure there will be advertiser backlash too with this kind of technology.
It is also not clear to me if the ISPs will work with individual publishers or networks and provide behavioral data to power their ads on publishers inventory or if they will override publishers inventory with their own ads (which will probably cause sudden death of ISP based targeting) or if they will do popups (pop under) creating new inventory. NebuAd does however have a service for publishers where publishers can use their services on their own inventory, however I am not clear how ISPs plan to use it.
As I predicted earlier this year Behavioral Targeting has become a very common term among marketers. To cash in on this phenomenon a lot of new technologies and companies are springing up, I expect this trend to continue in 2008, we will see more innovation in coming month. Mobile and TV behavioral targeting is next in line too.
Questions/Comments?
About the Author:
http://webanalysis.blogspot.com
Anil has over 10 years of experience in Consulting, Business Intelligence, Web Analytics, Online Advertising and Behavioral Targeting. Anil helps companies use Web channel data to improve online business results (lead generation, conversion, retention and self-help metrics). Anil has helped several fortune 500 customers effectively use web analytics and increase their ROI on the web. Anil has worked with customers such as Microsoft, SmartMoney.com, ESPN, T-Mobile, Hoovers, Realnetworks, Starbucks, and TheStreet.com
Anil holds a B. Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from India and an MBA from University of Washington, Seattle.
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