by Philip Lop

Created on: February 22, 2012

The concept of targeted advertising sounds great. Why would Internet users not want to be shown advertisements that relate to their interests and aspirations? Why would advertisers not want to reach out to consumers that have a high likelihood of showing an interest in their products and services?

Targeted advertising is certainly a good concept. Businesses will often see a good rate of return on such advertising and consumers should be pleased that their time isn't necessarily wasted by irrelevant advertising. In the process of targeting advertising at you, however, brands and businesses may impact on your privacy in ways that you may not have initially imagined.

There is, for example, a significant risk of inadvertently disclosing personal information through targeted advertising. An article on the MSNBC website, for example, highlighted a case whereby a teenaged girl's pregnancy was largely revealed to her unsuspecting father via a targeted mailing that had identified her through what she had bought in a well-known department store. It was a rude awakening for both parties and clearly highlights the dangers of targeted advertising.

Companies like Google are working harder to establish very transparent policies, when it comes to their advertising, as a recent blog post described. Users can click a link next to targeted advertising, labeled 'why these ads' for an explanation of why Google presented the information in the way that it did. In a shared residence, where everybody may be using the same computer, or at the very least the same Internet connection and IP address, this may simply worsen the issue by highlighting the conclusions that Google has drawn.

How does this infringe privacy? There are countless scenarios to consider. If you decide to do some online research to try and find a surprise gift for somebody, then your Google advertising is likely to start presenting similar solutions through banners on websites that you (or the recipient) subsequently visit. Advertising choices in the workplace may give away some of the more personal web searches that you have been conducting, either into your health or your career prospects, for example, and displaying them back to colleagues that share the same computer as you.

Those infringements are based on situations where targeted advertising theoretically 'works' too. What's worse is that it isn't consistently accurate and can present advertisements that have nothing to do with you, but give somebody else

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