Establishing "permissible use" for online data

One of the common complaints about current online ad targeting practices is the tracking an individual’s browsing activity or behavior. When you visit a site more often than not your visit to that site is recorded or tagged with a cookie that can then be read by the vendor placing that cookie. In the last couple of years, in order to create more qualified reach for campaigns, there has been a shift to what is referred to in the industry as audience targeting. Audience targeting leverages your activities of being tracked to form "anonymous" intent segments of supposedly like-minded individuals. These segments are broadly licensed and resold to other companies who might have an interest in targeting people like you. The vendor often earns a royalty if your data is used - and most of the time this goes on without your permission and without you being aware.

The challenge with behavioral targeting is that it does serve to improve the user experience by storing your login information to make it easier to interact with your bank or online bookstore. Cookies also placed with vendors like your video rental store or favorite clothing store will use the cookie to make recommendations that can be very useful. When you as a user explicitly go to an online store, you establish what is referred to as a first party relationship.

"If you have a first-party relationship with Ann Taylor, meaning that you bought something online at their store, they should have the right to advertise to you without restriction," said Semcasting CEO Ray Kingman. "However, they should not be able to sell that to a third party who then turns around and sells you Coach bags because you looked at Ann Taylor."

The concept of establishing a minimal permissible use criteria on the use of behavioral targeted data would go a long way to eliminating much of the concerns about privacy.  If you knew that your bank wasn’t able to legally sell or broker the fact you bank online and have a gold card with a high limit, it would take much of the edge off people’s privacy concerns. Should your bank be able to offer you a premium financial product? Absolutely. They should, however, not be allowed to broker your information to third parties for resale.

Semcasting's IP Audience Zones was created in order to address the issues of reach and to promote a privacy friendly method for doing targeting without third party cookies. IP Audience Zones forgoes the need to rely on cookies and site visits to specific vendors. Instead of relying on one or two intent data points from a cookie advertisers can tap into a comprehensive profile of an audience that is based on 750+ publically available data points which have been grouped into over 5 million location-based "look-alike Zones." Using predictive analytics, IP Zones creates Zones of similar affluence, interests and affiliation which are both demographically and geo-graphically aligned.

Using IP Audience Zones, a company like Coach wouldn't need to tap into Ann Taylor's customer base in order to find qualified leads for its campaigns. It could focus its ad spend on groups of U.S. residents who reside in the zones with the statistically appropriate affluence level and life stage to purchase Coach products.