On friday the Pew Internet and American Life project released a report that only 28% of those surveyed were comfortable being tracked on line in order to be shown more relevant ads/ads for things they care about or were interested in seeing. The other 2/3rds have a negative view of targeted ads online.
I think this is because most people have forgotten the world of un-targeted ads — messages for stuff you don’t care about or don’t agree with are disconcerting. You pay attention but you don’t act on them. They are worse for the consumer in terms of distraction and less valuable to the advertiser in terms of conversion — and so if no one will be tracked, publishers will make less per ad — and then need to deliver more ads in general. This will not be good.
In December, I drove across the country (it is a long story but in short Bulldogs can’t fly commercial). In the middle somewhere far from any ocean, where New York Times delivery people dare not tread and gun control is based on credit card limits rather than the limits of common sense I saw billboards for one stop guns/ammo/fireworks warehouses and mega-churches for all types as well as a bunch of ads for the following (I was distracted enough to make a list in evernote):
This stuff is all really important to lots of people, but not to me. I was distracted by the messages but the advertiser’s dollars were wasted on me. If Do Not Track will make my experience browsing the web look anything like my drive down interstate 90 and 94, I will be first in line to accept cookies and pixels from every advertiser/ad tech company out there.