Americans Don't Want Targeted Ads 404
itwbennett writes "A survey by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania finds that US residents do not want to receive Web advertising tailored to their interests. 66% of those surveyed said they don't want tailored, or targeted, online ads and when asked if online ad vendors should deliver targeted ads by tracking customers' behavior across multiple Web sites, 86% of the 1,000 respondents said no. 35% of respondents said executives of companies that use personal information illegally should face jail time, and 18% said those companies should be put out of business. 'While privacy advocates have lambasted behavioral targeting for tracking and labeling people in ways they do not know or understand, marketers have defended the practice by insisting it gives Americans what they want: advertisements and other forms of content that are as relevant to their lives as possible,' the study said. 'In high percentages, [US residents] stand on the side of privacy advocates.'"
Re:Um, Duh! (Score:3, Informative)
This is not at all new. Go listen to the radio ads of the 1930s and 1940s, or watch some of the sponsored programs of the 1950s. Look at newspaper ads from before those eras.
Advertising has been about manipulating people into buying things for much longer than you seem to think. Why else do you think breakfast cereals have had mascots for so long? Manipulate the kids into begging for it enough, and a lot of parents are going to break down and buy it.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Informative)
No sane person wants any kind of ad, targeted or not.
I find the targeted ads on Google searches to be useful. When I'm searching for information on Product X and there's a sponsored link along the lines of "Buy Product X here for $...", I'll often click that link if the stated price is reasonable. Well-targeted non-intrusive ads can be quite helpful for comparison shopping.
I don't click on any of the ads on Google searches. Call me jaded, but I don't feel like being redirected to a site which redirects me to a site which redirects me to a site which is a spam site of some sort. I don't trust the ad links, and I don't click any of them. I don't even click the sponsored link. Ever. I've just become too jaded to any kind of commercialism online to ever bother rewarding a company(which I might very well be searching for to begin with to purchase from) to buying ad space. This goes for YouTube ads(the embedded ads that I immediately X out of. And no, I really don't believe that anyone on YouTube should be paid for making videos and posting them online.
To summarize: If I come across an ad/sponsored link in my online travels, I refuse to click on it. Not because I necessarily hate the company, but because I neither trust the ads I come across(spamming/phishing possibilities) nor do I wish to reward a company for intruding into my private life. Of course, I hate 90% of ads, period(Internet, TV, newspaper, magazine, billboard). However, Super Bowl ads do occasionally make me laugh.
What do consumers want? (Score:1, Informative)
Said like a true marketer: advertisers know what consumers want, and don't need consumers telling advertisers what is wanted.
Hate to break it to you, but people hate ads. All US ads, and this probably holds in most other countries, do not provide information about products, instead the ads try to convince people to buy things they don't need based on feelings toward the brand. The only people who like ads are marketers and corporations who profit from them. You know it's true, you just won't admit it.
Disable all Cookies, almost.. (Score:2, Informative)
I just set Opera Preferences to Cookies=OFF Flash=OFF ReferrerLogging=OFF GifAnimation=OFF.
Then i Edit Site Preferences to only allow things when i want.
Like youtube.com FlashOn and CookiesOn to allow autologin.
More Privacy and faster browsing for me!
urlfilter.ini
[exclude]
http://www.google./*.ico [www.google.]
http://www.google./images/* [www.google.]
http://images.google./*.ico [images.google.]
http://images.google./intl/* [images.google.]
http://video.google./*.ico [video.google.]
http://video.google./img/* [video.google.]
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/master-vfl*.png [ytimg.com]
http://intellitx/ [intellitx]
Basic system32\drivers\etc\hosts file
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 adservices.google.com
127.0.0.1 www.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 ad.yieldmanager.com
127.0.0.1 ads.adbrite.com
127.0.0.1 www.adbrite.com
127.0.0.1 3.adbrite.com
127.0.0.1 4.adbrite.com
TODO JavaScriptOFF...
But there still remain many Cookies to block.
Especially good stable settings for n00bs that cant defend
themselfs. I'm unsure if that's possible though...