Today, on the radio they talked about a new ad sponsored mobile data plan1. You get a new sim card for your phone for free and are able to download 200 megabytes at high speed per month. In exchange for that you are receiving one ad per day via text message, have to respond to one of these texts per month and are asked a lot of questions regarding your interests at time of registration. The information about interests are then used to target ads and personalize them to what they think might be most useful for you. The radio quoted a lady from a consumer rights angency. She was complaining about all the personal information consumers are asked in order to be able to sign up for the service. In her view it enables the company to create a personality profile of the consumers with his or her likes and dislikes2. This personality profile is bad in such ways that it enables the company to know everything about specific persons.
I went totally crazy when I heard that. Why does the whole world think that personalized ads are a bad thing? Why shouldn’t companies gather lots of information to target ads best? Let’s do a game. Let’s take personalized ads to its extreme. What if a single company got full information about one’s life? What if they know what this person thinks in every second, what this person’s desires, wishes and fears are and what the person needs, wants and definitley never ever wanted? What happens when this company then takes all these information, puts them together and runs them through a large computer? The result will be ads and commercials that are of use for the customer because they will be seeing ads that fit their interests and their needs. The car fanatic will see ads for new high performance parts for his or her car and the movie addict gets an overview about the hottest and newest DVDs on the market. The companies will stop vasting valuable ad space with useless ads that no one cares about. Even better: People will click more on these personalized ads because they matter for them. The advertisers are then willing to pay more per impression because they reach exactly their audience. In the end this will increase revenue for the company doing the targeting.
But is the consumer going to pay the bill? No! I would be jumping of joy because all the commercials on tv for cat food, medication for hemorrhoids and tooth brushes will be gone! Forever! I spend less time watching ads that I don’t care about and that never encourage me to do anything. And: As soon as I really consider buying a new smart phone and need some information on new models there will be a guy ringing at my door and handing me a leaflet with the one phone that fits my needs best. The one I would have chosen anyways but only after ages of digging through tons of different offers, specifications and mobile contracts. When was it last that telling someone everything about me saved me so much time?
What can be better than precisely targeted ads that meet my needs to an hundred percent?
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