Nate posts about a somewhat alarming demonstration given at a recent Tacoda event for publisher clients.
The gist of the issue is this… publishers targeting on behavioral can potentially use ad serving data (including click-through data) as targeting criteria. Therefore, one could target an ad for a cellular phone company to just those users who’d clicked on another phone company’s campaign. The implications for advertisers are obvious.
As Nate puts it: …if I was an advertiser, this would scare the hell out of me. At the very least, this example should make advertisers very conscious of the language on their behavioral IOs. I could also see this type of data misuse convincing advertisers that it’s too early to jump into behavioral at all.
UPDATE: I should add that Tacoda’s Dave Morgan stepped up in the middle of the demo — clearly understanding the incendiary nature of the issue — and made clear that the company didn’t advocate the use of such data for such purposes, but was simply discussing it.
I have to admit the thought of using ad serving/clicking data in behavioral is new to me — but it’s absolutely something the industry should be thinking about seriously.