Media Playground 2010: Targeting Technology – the privacy issue

“At what extent can we have paywalls but not have privacy walls?” asked John Snyder, CEO of Grapeshot at Media Playground’s Targeting Technology seminar today.

“We need to take a tighter privacy agenda, and work closely with media owners to make sure audience data is protected,” he added.  “It comes down to your commercial ethics… it’s amazing that media owners allow Google to sniff through their information.”

Snyder argued that publishers need to realise that they can still do “behavioural targeting within [their] universe”, without giving away all their data.  “At the moment, [publishers] are diluting the inherent value” of their data, he added.

Roger Williams, international marketing director at AudienceScience, agreed: “Publishers are guardians of consumer data.  They need to collect data correctly, and make sure the consumer understands what they are going to do with it.”

“The key for the industry is transparency”, added Christian Elsner, vice president of sales at nugg.ad.