British Telecom, or BT, will soon begin tracking its customer’s web surfing habits to better enable the ISP to serve targeted advertising, presumably in the same fashion as Facebook.
Improving targeting is the perennial obsession of the advertising sector, in line with the often-quoted saw: “I know half my advertising budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half”. The internet, where it is possible to count how many people see or click on an advert, has allowed marketeers to cut down on some wastage but getting the right advert in front of the right consumer remains a problem. Targeted ads are estimated to generate about 35 per cent more “clicks” than non-targeted ones.
While privacy groups are unsettled by the proposals, the mind boggles at the sort of advertising one might see, depending on their “web surfing habits”…
