The downside of a Do Not Track list
Catherine Holahan at BusinessWeek has a good story up about how the online experiences of everyday users could potentially change if a Do Not Track list is put into place. For those who may not have been following it, privacy groups have proposed a Do Not Track list that would halt advertisers and publishers from using visitor data to customize ads for them.
The problem, of course, is that so much of the Internet is now dependent on advertising. And that advertising has risen in value for publishers as they've increasingly been able to show ad buyers data on what sorts of people are visiting their sites. Higher value for targeted ads means publishers have been able to cut back on sheer volume and the combination creates, by most measures, a much better user experience.
So if vast swaths of the audience then opt not to have their behavior tracked and data collected the result will likely be more ads that are less relevant to the users.
As Holahan's article states, the creation of such a list depends greatly on whether consumers actually care as much about the issue as privacy groups do. But this idea seems to be much more likely to collapse the Web 2.0 world much more than just about any other threat.
All these online services that launch with ad-support as a business model. All the ad networks that are built around various forms of targeted ad delivery (including those owned and operated by Google, AOL and Yahoo!). These are all in danger of having the rug pulled out from under them if they can't pinpoint the advertising they buy, sell or otherwise depend on. And if you thought newspaper publishers were insufferable before, wait until their not-yet-substantive online ad revenue dries up.
I'm all for consumer privacy, and if this discussion creates an environment where those doing the tracking make adjustments in how they collect and protect identifiable data, then it's an undeniable good thing.
But everyone needs to be aware of just what a Do Not Track list means.
