DaxThink: Digital life

Ever experienced that feeling where you think you have opened up a can of worms? Last week I wrote a blog post about Phorm. In response to that I have since been involved in a long and healthy debate with many people, forums, phone calls and emails. There is clearly a lot of people who are deeply passionate about this topic, and rightfully so.

There are of course 2 sides to each story, and both should be considered.

Visit the Phorm site by clicking here to read about their innovation, ideas and technologies.

Visit the BadPhorm site to learn about the concerns some people have about this and similar companies.

As I am now in the lucky position of going on holiday for 10 days I placed my last post on this topic to the forum today and thought I would share it with you here too, see below.

If nothing else, the number of visitors to my blog has gone through the roof!

;)

Dax

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Summary post placed on BadPhorm.co.uk
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This has been a fascinating debate, and clearly one that involves a lot of passion.

I am disappearing on holiday for ten days and so will be unlikely to be contributing further for a while. Ten days with no connection is frightening and liberating!!

I will try and keep an eye on things and post updates to daxthink.com where appropriate.

Following all this discussion, I want to reiterate my stance on Phorm, or any other similar technology that exists now or in the future. And can I please remind everyone that whilst it is my team who would ultimately use this technology, during this discussion the opinions expressed are my own and no decision has yet been made by iCrossing as to whether this technology is suitable for us.

So my position:

1. Phorm looks interesting from the perspective of targeted advertising

2. I will be evaluating it as part of my search for innovative ad technologies on behalf of the agency and our clients

3. I believe in knowing all the facts and taking a balanced approach. I have heard a lot from people who are very much against Phorm through this forum, through my blog (daxthink.com) and through several emails. I have had very basic info from Phorm yet and they will have an opportunity to come in and present their company and future offering fully in August. There are several more questions I have for them now and will be asking them.

4. I am neither for or against Phorm at this stage.

5. I believe there are consumer concerns that must be factored in, but I do not 100% agree with all of the concerns that have been highlighted to me. But as discussed in part of this thread, each of us have different risk profiles. I also believe that consumers in general terms can often be swayed on things like privacy and will want to form (forgive the pun) my own opinion as to whether the consumer attitude (as recently highlighted in a survey by New media Age) is likely to be long standing or a snapshot in time.

6. As a digital agency iCrossing is involved with some of the world's largest brands. These brands have content that is valuable to them for a variety of reasons. I will want to understand how this value may be compromised, if indeed that is the case, by technologies like Phorm.

7. And finally as a consumer, whilst I have no issue with it at this time, I am in a fortunate position to be able to have a informed opinion going forward.

8. I may or may not post my thoughts on Phorm after my meeting with them for obvious confidentiality reasons, and these processes take time and no snap decision will ever be made about a new technology.

Thank you all, it has been fascinating.

Dax

I have been arguing for a while now that digital media planning often misses out on opportunities to truly understand the consumer. Buying media based on matching an ad profile (of demographic, geographic and socio-economic data) ignores buying cycle, motivation to buy, discussion, debate and consumers interactions.

At iCrossing we use a multitude of data sources that go beyond the ad profile, including social media audits and linguistic profiling.

A recent example is Lipsy, a women's fashion brand. Take a look at the case study on the site to learn more about how understanding key factors such as consumer language gave a huge boost to the overall campaign performance.

Click Here for the iCrossing case study.

Updated (28th July 2008): Thank you to everyone for their comments, this is clearly a contentious issue.

At the moment, as an advertiser, the opportunities that Phorm present are interesting. After all, we are always looking for better ways to target advertising to consumsers on behalf of our clients.

Consumer opinion is critical though, and will ultimately determine the success or failure of Phorm through direct action or by them walking away from their ISP. This is a very healthy situation.

Phorm are planning on offering 'freebies' in exchange for opting in. Phorm won't be for everyone, but as everyone has their price, I am sure that they may achieve the critical mass to become useful to advertisers and agencies. Only time will tell if that is the case and I am sure it will be a fierce debate in the interim. Just take a look at the comments this post is receiving to get a sense of the passion that people quite rightfully have for their future privacy. Therefore something like this must be on an opt-in basis.

I have Phorm coming into the offices to discuss their offering in more detail and dependant on the nature of the discussions re confidentiality then I will feedback thoughts at that time.


Original Post:

BT recently announced that they would be trialling the Phorm ad network on their ISP back end, and join the ranks of Virgin Media and Talk Talk from Carphone Warehouse.

Put simply, Phorm is an ad network that works by recording the pages that ISP customers visit and then serving ads that are more relevant to that user. They use a sophisticated system of unique code numbers as apposed to identifiable consumer data, and will categorise the sites visited in pre-determined buckets.

But there has been consumer backlash, most recently highlighted in a New Media Age survey. It states that 65% of UK adults would leave their ISP if it adopted ISP-based behavioural targeting, and 81% wanted the ability to opt-out.

But I think consumers may have got the perception wrong, or have not digested both sides. [edited]

There are a multitude of software vendors that sell tools to remove cookies from your computer, like they were an evil plague. But cookies are used for a variety of applications, and in the context of advertising help the user to have a better experience by targeting more appropriate ads.

This is exactly the business that Phorm is in, they are just monitoring and serving using better technology.

Consumers need to realise that advertising pays for most things they do online. Advertising online is not going to disappear. Advertising is not an evil entity, and as such isn't it more useful or enjoyable for them to at least be shown campaigns that are relevant to them?

What's more, consumers are already happily engaging this advertising of this type. Visit any major ecommerce site and you will be shown products that best match your purchasing history. Amazon led the way on this?

Is Amazon evil too?

Feeling dirty? Have a 'thought shower'.

Political correctness can be absurd at the best of times. But recently a council has left me shocked by their stupidity and complete waste of time and money.

The folks at Tunbridge Wells council have actually had a meeting to decide that the term 'brainstorming' might be offensive to those with mental illnesses. There are many quotes online from people who represent mental health charities saying that this is a ridiculous move.

And the outcome? The term brainstorming is out, the term 'thought shower' is in. I am very relieved that Tunbridge Wells has nothing worse to trouble itself with.

As they hadn't yet decided on the new name, I wonder if they had to have an offensive brainstorming to decide to abolish them forever?

Still using them? No, I thought not.

Went back to the site today after almost a year to see how it's changed. They have adopted the free model, which was an essential step given the emergence of FB (Facebook) and MySpace. They have also redesigned but have made it very difficult.

As an experienced digital media specialist I would like to think I know my way around a website. This is tricky though; took me a good few minutes to find my schools list again to see if anyone knew had arrived.

Also, clear signs they are copying FB with profile updates (like FB's status updates) and better profile pages than before. Overall though the experience doesn't add up and if you want to network in this way stick with your FB account.

Seems a shame, but is another reminder of how a 'darling' can become part of history so very quickly in this fickle media space.