Last week a close friend and business associate finally went over to TWITTER.
For a 40 year old with 3 kids to suddenly come out of the closet and start tweeting was a big shock. Although he claimed it was a valuable Digital Marketing tool for his new business startup, we all hope its just a mid-life thing which will soon pass.
For those of us disqualified by age from "Generation Y" Twitter seems a little scary. We enthusiastically followed the crowd as far as the familiar Curriculum Vitae-like atmosphere of LinkedIn. But when we tried to fit in at Facebook, we always looked like the Geography teacher at the school disco.
So I was heartened by the comments of FBI veteran turned Microsoft Security spokesman Ed (The Fed) Gibson in Waverley Towers this week. Ed, who has spent a lifetime chasing bad guys, captivated his audience with stories of X files Eastern European Cybercrime and implored us to stay off Twitter and Facebook – as any revelations placed there by you or friends will be available to embarrass and compromise you for all time...
Recent guesstimates indicate around 75% of web users are now participating in online social networks of some form. Clearly this new form of entertainment is taking over and older non-interactive media like TV, radio and the printed page must evolve if they are to retain our attention.
However, as the populace enthusiastically embraces the trend to broadcast their movements, relationships and even religious or political views, spare a thought for the longer term impact- making all our trivia a matter of public record makes it much easier for governments, advertisers and even criminals to build an accurate picture of our lives. Indeed, the Home Office have just announced plans to monitor social sites in an effort to track contacts and friends of criminals and terrorists.
But whether or not we choose to project ourselves digitally on a social site, all of us are slaves to Digital Snooping in one way or another.
Whenever we open a browser we are being tracked, categorised and targeted. Anonymous entities build an accurate profile of our innermost desires by a process of deduction. They know where we came from, where we are going next, and what we are looking for. These agencies tune and target advertising to meet our unspoken needs and report our habits to corporations to fine tune services to extract more cash from the unsuspecting consumer. And Ed The Fed can’t stop them because its all legal!
Don't believe it? Just switch of "automatic cookie handling" in your browser. This will reveal the extent to which your Internet Search engines, favourite video site, and Ad exchanges are tracking our every move. Every time we browse to a website including a syndicated ad, our browser is being "bugged" with a cookie which uniquely identifies and subsequently transmits our recent navigation history. Its enough to make you lock the doors, bar the windows and retreat into a digital Howard Hughes hermit-like state.
Most will understand that Google AdWords will deliver tomato sauce ads in the context of a webpage about Hot Dogs, but are not aware of behavioural advertising techniques which can pigeon-hole you as car owner, football fan etc by tracking your progress across the web.
Google, feeling confident of their brand value and dominant position in Internet advertising, recently announced their intent to fully embrace behavioural advertising - but in fact all of the major agencies are already using these techniques. Most will allow users to "opt-out" but the practicalities mean that only a miniscule percentage of users ever will.
Encouraged by these more targeted digital marketing techniques, advertising dollars are shifting to new media, and the recession seems to be delivering the coup de grace to printed media and perhaps ultimately TV advertising. 2008 figures recently published by the World Advertising Research Center showed newspaper ad revenues dropping nearly 20% in the final quarter of last year. This was enough to see 60 local newspapers shut down in 2008, a year when Local Internet Search overtook the mainstream print directories.
The implication for Joe Public is that increasingly sophisticated advertising techniques are invading our privacy and messing with our brains in a way that the ads in Coronation Street or the Daily Record never could.
The Digital Marketing cognoscenti place much faith in the predictions of the Razorfish Digital Outlook Report. Its 2009 report published this month recognises that the public are becoming immune to traditional paid media and that the overall digital experience is becoming as important as the actual physical product. With 75% of the online population now social, digital agencies are now very focussed on how to tap into Social Influence marketing.
This use of Social objects where people talk “around” things on the web - trivial things like a Facebook drinking game advertising an alcopop, a viral YouTube video selling chocolate with active eyebrows, or more significantly a Wesabe personal finance community impacting a retailers reputation and profitability. So we can expect the ad men to insidiously and aggressively work their way into the new medium of social media and networks in the coming year.
Despite this there are some positives for the public in the growing Digital media economy.
Direct web advertising is an improvement on printed classified ads – not only is it more convenient, it can make markets more efficient. Sure, its a shame about the demise of the Parish Newspaper, but companies and individuals embracing EBAY have grown very successful businesses particularly in niche areas which would not otherwise be viable. For the individual it’s easier to buy difficult to find stuff at a more reasonable price.
Likewise, in these straitened times, most would agree that price comparison sites are very valuable to the consumer. These useful sites allow similar products and services to be found, compared and ranked to find the best deal. Their business models are usually funded by web advertising - in fact a mixture of sponsorship, agency placed ads, and affiliate funding.
Some web companies have built respectable business models purely on affiliate funding. MoneySavingExpert, the “consumers revenge” and most successful Personal Finance site in the UK eschews direct advertising but generates a tidy income purely on the fees paid when users click-thru to referral-paying companies and affiliate agencies. Skyscanner, the Edinburgh based budget flight search engine and comparison site which aims to answer questions like "Where can I go for under £100 next weekend from Edinburgh?” has built a £5M turnover on affiliate income.
So whilst we see the benefits, know that Big Brother really is watching us. 2009 may well be the year of Digital Media, when we feel peer pressure from our Freindsters to start Tweeting. However, I think it safer to commit MySpace Suicide and opt out of the ad networks - if you would like to join me in splendid isolation try http://www.privacychoice.org/
