Bad Phorm
The web advertising service Phorm has managed to attract some amazingly bad press over the past few weeks. It has executed the PR equivalent of what a former colleague called the Elvis death plunge – with news of secret BT trials coming in the same week as a report of £16.6m annual losses, and bad reviews from security experts.
Phorm’s problems are a worry for those who want to make money out of the internet.
The message seems to be: People don't want targeted advertising. Remember the hugely negative response to Facebook's Beacon release last year?
Many of us will prefer to opt out of targeted advertising – ad companies and Phorm are increasingly giving us the chance to do this.
This will help avoid advertising based on what we write in our emails, post on social network sites, and browse casually on the internet.
But you can't escape it really.
Barclays is just one bank already using online visitor profiling systems such as Touchclarity which allows the company to tailor services to a certain type of customer. Google knows everything you've ever searched for in the past 18 months – a reason why people are so keen to advertise on it.
The internet is big business, and everyone wants to make a buck from it.
Just as you might end up buying a product because five years of TV advertising has created a brand aura in your head, so it will be with internet display advertising – you will be more likely to buy from a company you've heard of.
You can keep your personal details under wraps as much as you want, but at the end of the day you can't escape some degree of targeted advertising, just as you can't escape seeing razor ads on TV in half time during a football match, or seeing a beer mat in a pub.
Phorm argues its system does little more than this. It simply puts you in an advertising channel - "middle class male", for example – without holding any of your personal information, or putting a cookie on your machine.
But you wouldn't know it from the press Phorm has been getting.