The Fall Out From The WSJ Behavioural Targeting “Investigation”

The WSJ ran a piece on the use of targeting in online advertising this week. The story is, to say the least, a tad hysterical, and tries to paint the practice of audience buying as some sort of creepy inhuman activity. Had the industry figures quoted in the story known the intention of Angwin's piece they would have never participated. It's not likely that Julia Angwin or other WSJ staffers will get easy access to industry insiders anytime soon after publishing this lopsided op-ed. It should also be noted that when I was reading the Angwin story the WSJ dropped a number of pixels on my machine. Taking the moral high ground has never seemed so ridiculous. The WSJ "investigation", albeit somewhat subjective, has stoked a lot of industry reaction.

Jeff Jarvis waded into the debate yesterday with a typically acerbic post about the WSJ's moral posturing. He suspects there is a carefully crafted agenda behind the WSJ piece. Murdoch has taken a mighty risk with his payall strategy - and is determined to make it work. Murdoch wants all content providers behind a paywall so that he can get users to pay for his commoditised news. Targeted advertising is a problem for him given that it is making his competitors some decent revenue. He knows too that US and EU law makers are in the midst of introducing new legislation on user privacy - and what better way to muddy the water than to instruct one of his loyal subordinates to write a politically charged piece on the dangers of behavioural targeting. In fairness to Jarvis, it does smell awfully cynical on the part of the WSJ. Ole Rupe has been known to periodically use his media machine to extend his influence over the political class.

In a more measured response to the WSJ piece, Omar Tawakol, Bluekai CEO, counters the Agwin assertion that behavioural tracking is somehow akin to spying. Tawakol's rightly points out that all data collected is done anonymously. He also argues that third party cookies are necessary for ad relevancy. Without the use of behavioural targeting, ad agencies would not be able to run successful campaigns on websites, resulting in lost revenue for content providers. And with declining ad revenue, publishers would be forced behind the paywall (result for Murdoch!). Tawkoil still thinks the industry must do a better job of telling users when they're being tracked and what data is being collected. A clearly defined opt-out must be available on all sites tracking behaviour in order to target advertising. Now it would have been nice to have had that option on the WSJ while I was reading Angwin's insightful piece. You have to love consistency.