Consumers Love/Hate Relationship with Behavioral Targeting

(MoneyWatch)  An interesting study put out Monday by eMarketer, showing the double-edged sword the online advertising industry is balancing itself on. One the one hand: despite all the hype of about online, people generally don't like online advertising, no matter what kind. Banner ads, rich media, videos -- to each one consumers are saying, "No thank you."

So, says the intrepid online marketer, we'll just make these ads more relevant, right? Dial in the consumer a bit tighter in the crosshairs, make sure everything that's being shilled is something smackdab in his or her target demo, and problem solved. But behavioral targetiing comes laden with issues of its own. From the release accompanying to the report:

[W]ith its promise of relevant advertising and greater revenues from ad inventory, behaviorally targeted advertising offers a ray of hope for online advertisers and Web publishers.

"And yet, collecting the visitor data needed for online ad targeting is raising concern among Internet privacy groups, the FTC, state governments--and, most importantly, consumers," says Mr. Hallerman...

For the public, government agencies and the mainstream media, behavioral targeting can represent all the ways that companies appear to be violating individual privacy on the Internet.

However, a survey of consumer attitudes finds that, on the balance, consumers would prefer to see ads that are at least relevant or from trusted sources, given the alternative:

It may be that, in the end, consumers feel the same way about relevant ads as they do about laws or sausage -- we'd prefer to not see how they get made.