14 DAY TRIAL // Online advertising is a solid business, something to which Google can attest. But, in a broader sense, it’s still small when compared with traditional advertising markets, notably TV. Online campaigns do have plenty of advantages over the old way of doing things and one of the biggest is the possibility to have direct data about the targeted consumer, something impossible with TV ads. But online ads also come with special challenges, which, in some cases, are only now being tackled.
Targeted advertising is a promising area for advertisers and for the consumers as well, to a certain degree. But the idea of having ads directed at you based on what an ad network ‘knows’ about you isn’t exactly reassuring for most people and has kept the market relatively small. Several systems are now competing to get the approval from a group of organizations in the advertising business to become the standard way consumers can get information about what’s behind a targeted ad.
One of the systems that are apparently a favorite, dubbed Power I, is being developed by a startup called Better Advertising. The system would add a small icon to targeted ads that would enable consumers to get more info on the ads they’re seeing. Hovering the mouse over the icon will reveal the data that the advertising companies used to target the ads, as well as the possibility to opt out of the targeting.
The key is having the system become standard to ensure that the experience is the same no matter who is serving the ad. Consumers generally have the possibility to opt out of the targeted ads with large advertising networks like Google or Yahoo. However, even when they have the option, it’s not easy to find the opt-out pages and most people don’t bother. With Power I and similar systems, all of the options will be available from inside the ad.