Sunday, June 10, 2007

Less annoying ads using personalization

Cord Blomquist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute cleanly explains the appeal of personalization for advertising:
All of this data is not being used to create an Orwellian dystopia, but an online ad revolution.

The Web's most annoying feature, the ubiquitous banner ad, may be forever changed. Fewer in number and more useful, the ads of tomorrow will hone in on users' real needs and wants.

Future searches will know if a query for "ring" should present ads for engagement rings, Lord of the Rings, or Saturn's rings. Ads that appear alongside searches will become a resource, instead of a nuisance, thanks to more intelligently assessing users' intentions. This will make our back-link powered, dumb search of today seem, well...dumb.
See also my earlier posts, "Google wants to change advertising" and "Is personalized advertising evil?"

1 comment:

Cord said...

Thanks for quoting my piece. If you don't currently subscribe to CEI's tech newsletter be sure to sign up here:

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Keep reading C:\Spin, CEI's newsletter. My next piece will be on video game rating regulation.