A new tool from Yahoo aims to tackle the consent/privacy debate of search engine marketing head-on.
Yahoo’s ‘ad interest manager’, currently in beta testing, is designed to provide transparency about the way users of Yahoo’s online services have their information tracked and incoporated into internet based advertising from the company’s Ad Network. It allows users to see the ‘interest categories’ that they are currently being bracketed with, and gives them a clear, visible option to opt-in or out of interest based advertising.
Anne Toth, Yahoo’s VP of policy, and its Head of Privacy, said that the new tool “will provide transparency into how Yahoo!’s interest-based advertising works.”
“Ads tailored to user’s interests will make online experiences more compelling and user focused” said Toth. “Ad interest manager will show users what interests we think they have, and also let them edit and change those interests to reflec the most up to date information”.
The new feature is Yahoo!’s answer to the ongoing controversy over behavioural targeted advertising on the internet.
Recently search-engine marketing has come under scrutiny by the U.S. Senate, who are conducting an investigation into Google’s relationship with online privacy. In a similar discussion of the issue in the UK, the Internet Advertising Bureau (UK) released a report in November that revealed that the majority of internet users were unaware of targeted advertising and how it worked. Significantly for PPC advertisers and others who use online targeted ad platforms, many of those with an incomplete understanding were hostile to the concept; often people perceived tracking as a breach of privacy.
However, the ability to offer relevant advertising to internet users is a large part of the appeal of search engine marketing and online display ads to advertisers and marketers. As David Zinman, Yahoo!’s vice president and its General Manager of display advertising said to WebProNews, the company business model is “based almost entirely on advertising”, and “consumers are more likely to click on advertising that speaks directly to them and their interests”.
The effectiveness of the Ad Interest Manager as a method of transparency and ad improvement is, however, less than certain. Currently there appears to be no promotion of it on the Yahoo! homepage and it is unclear how the average user is expected to be aware of its existence. However, the introduction of features such as these across other search engines is a likely development in search engine marketing in the near future.
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