208222 Resource 168909 190240 170142 1214857181782 1215445865695 Controlled Behavioral Targeting: A Double-Edged Sword Relevant ads targeted towards Internet users’ needs lend to high click-through rates, yet debate over its infringement upon individual privacy persists… <p>Christine Pepin<br />Media Coordinator</p><p>With the potential audience for Internet ads exceeding two-thirds of the US population by the end of 2009, both online advertisers and web publishers are highly optimistic about greater revenues from ad inventory.&nbsp; Unfortunately, these prospective 200 million users are actually becoming unresponsive to the most common forms of online advertising, finding ads to be irrelevant to their current interests.&nbsp; With the use of behavioral targeting, advertisers have a chance of reversing user's indifferent attitudes about the banners, rich media, and video ads disseminated online.</p><p>By targeting ads based on a consumer&rsquo;s specific interests or needs online advertisers may begin to see the revenues they seek.&nbsp; However, with behavioral targeted advertising comes a greater risk of violating the individual privacy of consumers, which is closely monitored and protected by privacy groups, state governments, and the FTC.&nbsp; The good news for advertisers is that 66% of US Internet users indicated they would click on additional Internet ads if they were more relevantly targeted.&nbsp; The bad news is that a nearly identical number (65%), represents users who call Internet advertising more intrusive than print ads. <br /></p><p>Below is a study by eMarketer that shows the different attitudes of Internet users towards online advertising: <br /></p><p><img vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" align="bottom" src="http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/091001-092000/091815.gif" alt="Attitudes of U.S. Internet Users Toward Online Advertising by Age, October 2007- eMarketer" /></p> 9 application/xml false banners behavioral targeting internet privacy rich media What's Not to Like About Behavioral Targeting? Link to full article from eMarketer http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006391&src=dp2_home Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080623 Firefox/2.0.0.15 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 kvera 70.21.126.116 false true false false true 177522 false false true false false false true 168909 blog blogsite/EyeTraffic/web