For the last few weeks I’ve been thinking alot about implicit content, that is the trail of information that internet users leave behind as they browse the web, information about preferences, clicking habits, needs, etc. At Engage we’ve been working on a couple white papers about the role which the internet is playing in the new buying process and it’s clear that implicit content is playing a huge part in that. What is also clear is that the retail and advertising indutries, the people who really have the most to benefit in harnessing implicit content, still haven’t quite figured out how to use it to its fullest extent.
I don’t think the problem is with the technology. Sophisticated web analytics software is out there in full service products like WebTrends and application developers are doing a good job at figuring out how to turn this tracking data into something that’s easy to interpret and act on. It seems instead the problem lies perhaps in the application of this technology. Specifically, retailers and advertisers still need to ensure users generate meaningful implicit content. They also need to make sure that they’re highly sensetive to an individual’s privacy concerns as they gather this data.
These thoughts were sparked by two articles we’ve come across in the last few weeks. The first is a blog post by Andrew McAffe, Associate Professor of Havard business school. The post focused on a debate in the Web 2.0. world about the importance of explicit user-generated content–that is customer reviews, comments on blogs, edits made to wiki pages, etc.–versus implicit content. McAffe puts forth the idea that this debate is somewhat meaningless because explicit content is a great way of generating implicit content. When user submit product ratings, comments, tags for products or services, it leaves behind a nice trail of browsing behavoir that may be just as useful as what users actually submit.
What struck me about this comment is that most online retailers and advertisers don’t even think about the possibility that gathering implicit content might be an active, not passive job. It seems that there is a prevalent though that its a matter of installing the technology and then watching what happens, like it’s footage some kind of videocamera. The big exception to this is Google, who’s business strategy seems at times entirely (and notoriously) based on soliciting explicit content from users to enable analysis of the impilcit content users leave behind. With this, even Google is taking a sledgehammer approach to the problem. They’re gathering every kind of data they can–email, word docs, search habits, reading habits -then sorting through the whole volume to serve up ads. The problem is that there’s so much noise in the data and so little signal that sometimes this doesn’t work. Even now, Gmail is serving ads related to topics based on a conversation I’m having with an editor. Although I have no need for any of what’s being displayed, my personal nuances are drowned out in Google’s blunt approach. There’s still alot of room here for retailers to work out how to get users to generate targeted implicit content answering specific questions about users, instead of trying to collect everything to only sort through what’s important afterwards.
The issue of privacy and implicit content is just as thorny, if not more so. A new survey done by TNS Global shows that consumers have mixed feelings about the online behavior tracking necessary for gathering implcit content. Ars Technica has a great article giving run-down on the survey results. The basic conclusion though is that surfers don’t like ads that aren’t targeted at them, but they don’t really like being tracked either. The survey paints a rather bleak picture of the marketers task, putting them in a position of resolving a total paradox, but somehow I think it must be missing something because given the right circumstances there are places where users have opted-in to tracking. Take for example, Amazon. Shoppers could easily shop without creating an account, but most don’t. Part of this is the fact that an account stores shipping and billing information thereby speeding the order process, but there’s no doubt that another big part is Amazon’s famous reccomendations. There’s something about the way in which Amazon presents the tracking that makes customers less worried about losing their privacy. Perhaps it’s transparency and the clear link between the tracking and the results. When customers see an interesting looking book or CD just next to an item pulled from their browsing history, it’s pretty clear how letting Amazon track their behavior directly benefits them. As well, Amazon gives users control over their browsing history, so customers can delete things that they don’t want factored into future reccomendations.
The Amazon model might not be the best for everyone. It definitely works better for retailers than marketers, but there’s definitely something there worth looking at. Unless someone can figure out how to balance these concerns, the real promise of implicit content may never be realized.
Updated: Just after writing this we stumbled across an article on CRM entitled “AOL CPO Jules Polonetsky on Hitting the Privacy Sweet Spot.” In it Polonetsky offers an interesting perspective on the privacy issues talked about above.
No related posts.
