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This was an edited version of a longer piece. The full version follows:
"Will online measurement kill self expression?"Monkey is a digital-only men’s magazine based on print rivals Nuts and Zoo. It’s full of scantily clad girls. It can graphically mimic pages being turned by dragging a mouse from right to left across the screen. I was reading it yesterday and the pages stuck together. I thought, "How ironic." Despite all the talk of online innovation many consumer habits will stay the same.
Upon this realisation, I began having flashbacks. The first took me those early heady days as an online newbie. I eagerly embraced these new "chat rooms" geekily talking about Star Wars or Liverpool FC. I created my own online name so no one knew me which meant best of all, no one pre-judged me for being called Kevin. No jibes about having a ford Capri, fluffy dice and a rat named Roland as a friend. For the first time in my life I could talk freely without judgement. I was free. Released from the shackles and burdens of my real life baggage I knew this interweb thing was going to be the social meting pot of the future.
Back in the present I savoured my nostalgic glow before flashing back to a focus group I attended last week. It was analysing people’s opinions and behaviours when using search engines and aggregator sites. Safely hidden behind a one way mirror, my chilli chicken was surprisingly good and my bottle of Kronenberg was disappointingly warm.
The first wannabe alpha male soon piped up. He consults the internet but he still likes to pick up the phone and speak to humans before a purchase. When the rest of the sniggering group disagreed with him he visibly shrunk, back-pedalled with panache and boldly reinvented himself as an online die hard. We relocated him at a PC to observe how he really formulated his shopping list and it wasn’t long before he was nervously looking for a phone.
As I downed another beer and impressively commented on the fascinating convention of peer pressure, someone said "and he’s not even thinking about who’s watching him from behind the glass."
Back in present time, as I gave up trying to un-stick my Monkey, I pondered on the societal straightjackets of real life compared Online’s offer of liberation. I thought of the back-peddler, "How long will it be before he finds himself on Second Life, probably as "Tallulah" the six foot blonde who likes wearing short skirts?" (By the way, if you pick a Second Life avatar that is exactly like yourself in real life does that make you a narcissist or very dull? If your application is rejected does that answer my first question?)
There is a "however" brewing. However is the internet really this anonymous sanctuary? Online measurement is becoming ever more sophisticated with "last click wins" methodology being replaced by user clickstreams; media planners can choose behavioural, sequential and re-targeting methods to serve consumer ads based on their online movements. Search engines with varying degrees of secret methodology and up to eighteen months of data on your personal search activity are buying third party adserving companies on their quest to ensure that they can potentially know EVERYTHING about your online life. You see whilst online users revelled in being their true selves for once in their lives, all along there was someone behind the one-way mirror watching and noting their every move, and they’re getting better at it.
It could get worse. Phil from Norwich likes a few sneaky looks at adult websites. The next day his girlfriend borrows his laptop and everywhere she goes she is served adult ads. Horrified she rows with Phil. Phil ends up sleeping on the couch. The next day, tired and mortified, he deletes his cookies and browsing history. A week later his missus warily uses his laptop again to search for "shoes" on Google. Being pre-emptive and not confined by cookies or browser deletion, the second she presses "s", Google lists all the "s" words Phil has been using and "sexy blondes" shows up. His missus is a brunette. She is not his missus anymore.
Will our deepest, truest, most private aspects of our personalities, now unleashed online spill into our non-virtual lives? Sharon from Surrey gets served ads relating to her secret gambling habit, Norah from Nottingham sees multiple dating site ads on her husband’s PC. What if Cosmopolitan or Men’s Health write an article on "how to know what your partner is doing online"? Suddenly a legion of suspicious partners wants to know why the house PC has no browsing history. These "outed" people can no longer trust their computers anymore and change their behaviour. Can open, worms everywhere. They either stop going to certain places or visit lots of random sites to throw the ad targeting systems off the trail. Yahoo’s already offer behavioural targeting with the strapline "She’s moving house. But of course you already knew that".
What next? Will pop-up blockers be replaced by programs that randomly visit sites to smokescreen people’s true activity? What happens to these new targeting systems then? Cookies can be deleted but they’ll evolve beyond layman understanding. A USA company, United Virtualities have already developed the controversial "Persistent Identification Element" (PIE). A backup ID system for cookies, they are tagged to the user's browser, providing each with a unique ID just like traditional cookie coding. However, PIEs cannot be deleted by any commercially available anti-spyware, mal-ware, or adware removal program. They will even function at the default security setting for Internet Explorer
There are two types of PIES, and AccuCounter PIE, a cookie replacement that counts unique users accurately and a backup PIE: a PIE that not only counts unique users but also recognizes the visitor and restores any erased cookies. Spooked by the connotations of such inventions, one market analyst commented ""If you're going to get in a war with the consumer, you'll lose. PIE is a ludicrous concept."
Where does it end? It ends with men having a "secret laptop" hidden at the back of the wardrobe that they sneak out when their partners aren’t around. You see, despite all the talk of online innovation many consumer habits will stay the same.
This isn’t about identity fraud, it’s less obvious. It’s about society, embarrassment and affected behaviour. This will make advertiser’s jobs harder. Cookie deletion already skews unique user figures. A Comscore white paper stated that 30% of consumers regularly delete cookies and one person could be counted 4.5 times a month. This means real figures and frequency setting strategies are inaccurate. Also, check out Dave Chase’s article on the future of media, targeting and Google in 2010
http://www.imediaconnection.com/. This future is approaching fast. Will online measurement kill self expression or kill our ability to effectively market to the online community? The answer is yet to emerge.
