One of the chief issues I’ve always seen with search delivering the right results is the lack of insight into who is searching. With the introduction of +1 Google gains a much more real insight – what those around you are looking at. In aggregate this is useful in killing spam, building up good resources and sorting out poor / unliked results but when applied back to a search’s network whether it’s a contact or location based it becomes hugely powerful.

For example, if I search for “Miramar” result #1 is a city, #2 is a military base and nowhere on page 2 is the result I’m looking for – my former apartment community. Using location Google is able to infer some information about what result I may want, and even shows a map, but it’s not enough certainity to switch out the result set. With +1 data from local (geotargeted) networks they get a whole other dimension of insights to counterweight what is the most relevant (aka most linked too/ word weighted) with what is actually being looked at and suddenly the right result has a real shot of making it up top.

If Google is able to build enough of a profile network, +1 could become even more important in driving search results by understanding that all of my friends searching for a particular sports bar with a generic name or from within a larger chain were looking at the same venue and adjust accordingly, potentially even resetting the result in time given the type of listing.

Facebook is already doing this to some degree by leveraging your own likes, connections and your larger your network to suggest people, places and brand results in searches, and most of the time it’s right on (and with 2 million+ likes, that’s a big headstart). As Facebook and Google war over who is going to control searching, relevancy to the individual has got to be in the top couple of spots for importance and whoever understands the most about the person searching can deliver the best results to win their repeat attention and usage.

Google, while smart to bring in social feedback, is behind in a big way when it comes to making this applicable personally. Facebook and even youtube, twitter and others simply have them beat in connections per user and a partnership a la Amazon’s “your Facebook friends…” would have let them move quicker to incorporate individual social learnings into output. Even without the deep networks for users there’s a lot of implications to improving relevancy right now just by weighting down “-1” results, and of course there’s going to be a lot of blackhat attempts to leverage the tool to influence results too.

A few minutes ago I finished reading a post by Josh Gordon on The Lunch Pail (operated by interactive agency Knotice). The post is all about the debate over behavioral targeting and data privacy and the recent actions from consumer groups to try and get legislation enacted to limit it. In responding to this post I stated something which I often bring up in conversations – marketing should be behavioral for the customer’s sake.

One of the issues that privacy advocates bring up is how data is stored and used and how consumers optout of it. While there’s certainly reasons for consumers to want to optout and be able to protect themselves from certain types of targeting I would argue that basic demographic & behavioral targeting… the kind of targeting that first hit the web is in the consumer’s best interest and something they don’t really want to stop, even if misconceptions about its risks makes them think otherwise.

When you look at the numbers it’s clear that targeting works. It gets clicks in display, sales in any form and for just about every instance I’ve seen, creates a better return than traditional blast ads. The reason why is simple – because the ads relate to the people seeing them either directly through demographic data or implicitly based on activity and inferences. This is of course a benefit to companies in advertising efficiency and optimization but it’s also a benefit to the consumer: they get better messaging.
The reality of our consumer driven market is that advertising does and will exist.

When you think back to the pre-internet days TV ads were seen as the best way to reach people. Sure you couldn’t pick who exactly but if you got all of a demographic, or everyone, that’s was enough. The downside for customers was [and still] is that they have to see them all too. Just think about the tv experience: men see feminine products making them stumble for the remote, families see intimacy products making for uncomfortable pauses and just about everyone sees some sort of car, credit card or financial services ad which has nothing to do with them either because they target higher or lower than the intended demo. I like to joke about a new product, a “guy / girl” button to filter the most irrelevant ads out, it’s a joke but in some sense it would be great to actually have.

Online things started out just about the same with banners aimed at everyone [most still are]. However thanks to the availability of data they evolved taking demographics and activity to create true targeting. It’s not perfect and it’s not absolute but it’s a great indicator and now instead of seeing random ads we often see ads that are designed for us based on who we are and what we do. Ads that we can use.

As technology improves and more companies move online segmentation has become even better and faster. As a scuba diver and member of Facebook I now see discount offers based on my profile fields which I like. I also see ads for dating services and textbooks which don’t take advantage of my profile and are completely ignored. Targeting me makes sense.

Targeting works so well it’s finally being discussed for TV by pulling subscriber data into the mix. Again, why not? If I have to see ads why shouldn’t I see ones I like. Why shouldn’t I see ones I could respond to? Why offend me by showing me things I have no interest in and creating ad blindness when things could be relevant? Sure some companies will want to get broader and target me to push me towards their product lines but something’s just don’t make sense. I don’t need denture cream, I don’t want a personal accident attorney while watching law & order and I certainly don’t need any music from Miley Cyrus (although I’m sure it’s just fine for those in the demographic). I need the messages that pertain to me and when I see them I respond. That’s why targeting works.

Of course this doesn’t mean we should rush to take a page from Minority Report where our eyes are scanned and ads popup as a result. Some degree of anonymity is essential but I think most marketers know this. A company selling adult apparel isn’t going to have much success showing banners saying “hey, you bought XYZ lingerie, click here to buy the matching top” so they aren’t going to go there, and if they do, they’ll know how bad it was real quick. The same goes for calling out targeting too blatantly – a few companies have tried saying that they saw you on their site and to come back, they learned their lesson and now we just imply to come back, we don’t state we know you were there.

At some point there may be too much data and I agree, it would be nice to be able to remove any history of the pages I looked at while shopping for my girlfriend before she sees relevant ads but whether or not people can opt out something that would need a lot of hammering out to be practical so for now I’ll leave it with this. Would you as a consumer rather see an ad you might act on or whatever irrelevant message just happens to show up? I’d bet you prefer the former and that’s why letting “opt out” really requires customers to “optin” to understanding first.

….And as I went to post this what comes on tv? An ad for the New York Times paper which I read online and would never be considered a likely purchaser for offline. Nice use of ad money.

For more on the data gathering debate I’d suggest reading Josh’s original post and taking a look at a few of the links in his post.