IAB Notwithstanding, There's Nothing Creepy About Good Display Ad Design

Michael Leamonth's article in AdAge about the IAB's public service campaign got my attention this week.  When a major trade association in your industry throws around words like "creepy", it tends to jump out at you.

To begin with, let's just restate that ad design and campaign design is what determines effectiveness.  Malware and spam don't belong in well-designed ads, end of story. They never have and they never will.

The PSA campaign bought 500 million impressions to start and is is aimed at consumers and regulators in an effort to communicate the benign realities behind ad targeting.  Given the new muscle the Federal Trade Commission seems to be flexing in the online space, this effort may be too little, too late.

In terms of online privacy and display ad targeting, when there is no personally identifying information being collected, I have a hard time understanding what the worry is and where the "real" issues are.  It needs to be known that targeted banner ads typically don't traffic in nearly as much information as users have been shown to willingly divulge.  Users willingly exchange scads of personal information (some call it TMI) for convenience and function on Facebook, social media sites, and to credit card companies and ecommerce companies.

More broadly,  exaggerated expectations of privacy on privately held and operated for-profit websites seem strange to me.  These sites aren't part of a commons, at a fundamental level and shouldn't be handled as such.  When a site is not engaging in malware or spam or spyware, when it hasn't crossed a coercive line, it should be left alone to work its data how it wants.

Which gets back to the reality that good design, good message and good execution is what makes a winning display ad campaign.  If you deliver these things, you'll never need coercion.

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[Ad Interest Manager From Yahoo]

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