swa66 - 7:51 am on Oct 2, 2009 (gmt 0)

A study by the University of Pennsylvania and the Berkeley Centre for Law and Technology is being reported on in the press:

[theregister.co.uk...] :

Research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and the Berkeley Centre for Law and Technology has found that 66% of adult US citizens do not want advertising to be tailored to what advertisers think are their interests.

[computerweekly.com...] :

Privacy advocates said the research would give authorities a political green light to enact reasonable rules and policies. The US Congress is considering such legislation, it was revealed after a coalition of 10 privacy campaigners published a 13-page report about behavioural tracking.

The full report is available:
[graphics8.nytimes.com...]
Title: Contrary to what marketers say, Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and three activities that enable it.
Authors: Joseph Turow, Jennifer King, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Amy Bleakley, and Michael Hennessy

Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66%) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages— between 73% and 86%--say they would not want such advertising.

And if you think your "facebook/mysapce/... " generation audience cares less, you might be right, but still the majority is against it:

Our survey did find that younger American adults are less likely to say no to tailored advertising than are older ones. Still, more than half (55%) of 18-24 year-olds do not want tailored advertising.

And if you count on mercy, the respondents are quite unforgiving when it does go wrong:

Beyond a fine, companies that use a person’s information illegally might be punished in other ways. Which one of the following ways to punish companies do you think is most important? The company should fund efforts to help people protect privacy 38 Executives who are responsible should face jail time 35 The company should be put out of business 18 The company should not be published in any of these ways 3 It depends 2 DK 4 DK=Don’t Know

So, have you opted out of interest based ads yet ?
Or are you ready to face a jury where 66% hates what you do and more than half wants you to either serve time or go out of business if it does goes wrong (there is now a very low cap of $2500) ?

[edited by: swa66 at 7:59 am (utc) on Oct. 2, 2009]