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The furore around Phorm continues. This time, it is the release of emails, requested under the Freedom of Information Act by a member of the public, between the Home Office and Phorm that are causing the bother.
The BBC report shows that the Home Office were in contact with Phorm back in 2007, endeavouring to discover the nature of the technology and
exchanges were about helping the department understand “public safety considerations and legal obligations” about behavioural advertising in general.
For any in the UK internet marketing industry who have been considering behavioural advertising, the fact that the EC started legal proceedings against Britain just a fortnight ago about the interpretration of EU laws on confidentiality of communications shoule be borne in mind.
Whilst behavioural advertising may have benefits for commercial entities and consumers alike in delivering targeted advertising rather than inundating consumers with irrelevant advertising, there has to be care taken over how it is a) implemented and b) perceived from now on.
On the second point, the PR damage done to those companies who stated they planned to use the technology is quite considerable, although when as a company you have approx 28% of UK broadband market share, the dissenters and damage may seem trifling. For smaller companies, it could cause a major problem.
We have by no means seen the last of the Phorm debacle yet, although it is highly likely that behavioural advertising will be adopted at some point in the future, as other companies are also launching their own versions and behavioural guidelines have been issued which come into force in Sept 2009 in the UK.
As ISPs struggle to find ways forward to bring in advertising revenue, it seems that behavioural advertising using the likes of Phorm will not find many takers after all. This week, Sky and Tiscali signalled that they will not be using Phorm or NebuAd, nor do they plan to adopt behavioural advertising.
This is good news for consumers who have been vocal in the extreme about the use of Phorm, and its impact on privacy etc. BT and Talk Talk appear to be going ahead, whilst Orange and Virgin Media seem to be dithering about whether rather than when they might start to implement it.
In a world where the battle for consumers, particularly in harsh economic times, is playing on people’s minds and business plans, the negative PR surrounding the likes of Phorm may see it influencing consumer decisions. If this then results in customer churn (after all, it is substantially easier to change ISPs these days since the MAC code revisions introduced by Ofcom this summer), ISPs are unlikely to rush in to introduce potentially unpopular new technologies such as this.
It does mean however that there is still a space for an ethical, opt-in advertising system to be introduced that is not entirely driven by the need to find profits, but actually attempts to deliver relevant ads to users actively seeking help in finding the products and services they require. Bit like the search engines are trying to do really!
Unless you have been hiding from the world, it would have been difficult to miss the very many discussions about behavioural targetting of ads in the UK by BT (and others) using the Phorm technology.
The test launches today and the depth of feeling against such technologies is obvious not just in the press, but also in the Ofcom interactive site about super-fast broadband and many, many other websites, fora, blogs, and so on.
As internet marketers, we are always interested in new technologies that allow us to deliver targeted campaigns for our clients, but would it really be worth using such a technology if by doing so we could alientate many potential customers in the process?
