Sunday, February 26, 2012

Avoiding Creepiness

Roger Dooley writes:

A new survey of UK social media users showed that nearly half “don’t like having ads targeted to them based on information included in their social media profiles, including activities, interests, and other personal data.” While Google’s motto has been, “Don’t Be Evil,” perhaps a more appropriate one would be, “Don’t Be Creepy!”

The positive spin, I suppose, is that the other half is fine with personalized ads, but this high level of negative sentiment has to be troubling to marketers who are counting on targeting and personalization to improve the effectiveness of their ads. I’ve been advocating personalization via social media and other means lately, and I believe there are ways to reduce the probability that consumers will find targeted pitches creepy instead of appealing.