The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

1. "...the industry already does a good job of covering privacy concerns and giving consumers the tools for opting out of whatever offends them online."
2. "They can obtain an 'opt-out cookie' to prevent any data from being associated with their browser. In addition, we provide complete instructions on how to opt out of Revenue Science's network advertising services."
3. "It is necessary for interested consumers to be able to find accurate information about all of these issues."
4. "We never collect personally identifiable information, so people benefit from more relevant content while remaining completely anonymous."
5. "We not only have to communicate how consumers' privacy is being protected, but the benefits that they are getting from BT, which will only increase as BT continues to become a more integral part of the economics of online media."

1. The ultimate decision maker regarding how good an job any industry is doing meeting the needs of consumers is the consumers themselves. In this case, companies using an ad network will feel the force of consumer decision before any network group does.
2. I defer to Stephan Spencer's, Founder and President of Netconcepts, great adage "If we want people to use it, it's going to have to be stupid simple." I have no idea how simple any company's opt-out methodology is and I'm not inferring anything about anything, I'm merely offering that for any tool to be used, it must be simple. The requirements that tools be initially simple then increasingly complicated was documented in For Angie and Matt, and The Noisy Data Finale.
3. Has anybody seen National Treasure? It's a great movie. Rent it if you can't find in on cable. Watch it a few times then decide if you agree with this statement (I do agree with it) and think it's actionable by the majority of consumers (I don't think it is).
4. Very honorable. Neither does NextStage. We're so finicky about being honorable, we list our Principles on line.
5. An interesting problem to solve, much like communicating the values of inoculation; we're going to protect you from something you can't actually see but might hurt you if you don't let us do this. I know that sounds facetious and I don't mean it to be. The purpose is essentially prophylactic and phyletics are a notoriously hard sell until people are dying around you.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Links for this post:

• Blog posts on Online Privacy
• Chapter 8 - Fair-Exchange, or "You Have to Give as Good as You Get"
• The Noisy Data blog arc
• Responding to BT and Privacy, Part 1
• Responding to BT and Privacy, Part 2