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 New York -- Are targeted ads attacking your privacy? Traditional media companies have fought hard to stem the flow of advertising dollars to Google and other large Internet companies are increasingly attempting to refine the search features of their own Web sites to help users once they arrive.
Google has taken a bigger task in serving users search within particular sites. Earlier this month, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of The Washington Post, Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal-Mart and others.
The search box becomes visible when a user enters the name of specific Web sites or company names -- say, “Best Buy” -- instead of entering a request like “cellphones.”
The set-up has been functioning well so far for both Google and the millions of users who take advantage of it. And some of the same retailers and publishers are not happy about it.
Though, the legislation proposed by NY’s Westchester County assemblyman Richard Brodsky thinks that targeted ads does attacks users privacy, has drafted a bill to limit the ways in which companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! can use consumers’ personal information for targeted advertising unless they have given their consent.
Brodsky, the assemblyman who sponsored the bill, stated, “Should these companies be able to sell or use what is essentially private data without permission? The easy answer is absolutely not.”
The latest, Forbes Inc., is likely to announce soon that it will start selling ads this spring for about 400 financial blogs. Currently, Conde Nast, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and other major media companies also have unveiled topic-specific ad networks to lure advertisers that want to buy more ads than any single site can sell.
If newspapers, magazines and broadcasters are unable to increase online ad inventory, they are “under threat of becoming less and less relevant to the advertiser,” said Russ Fradin, chief executive of Adify Corp., whose technology runs ad networks for Forbes and others.
The problem, for some in the industry, is that when someone enters a term into that secondary search box, Google will display ads for competing sites, thereby profiting from ads it sells against the brand. The feature also keeps users searching on Google pages and not pages of the destination Web site.
Analysts generally praise the characteristic as helping users save steps, but for Web publishers and retailers, there are trade-offs. While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.
“Google is showing a level of aggressiveness with this that is just not needed,” said Alan Rimm-Kaufman, a former executive with the electronics retailer Crutchfield who is now an Internet consultant. Google’s aggressiveness, Rimm-Kaufman said, ignores a user’s desire to reach a specific destination and it costs those Web sites visitors.
But these media networks -- some linking fewer than a dozen hand-picked Web sites -- may have a tough time competing with the larger networks of thousands assembled by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL.
“As our technology has continued to advance, we have gotten better and better,” said Lynda Clarizio, president of AOL’s emerging Platform A advertising unit. “We can handle a lot of demand from advertisers.”
However, so far Google said it had not received many complaints directly from companies, but some search-engine specialists were quick to pounce when the company announced its service. Ann Smarty, a search-engine marketing consultant who originated the SeoSmarty.com blog, contemplated that the new feature “could mean bad news” for sites. Other search-marketing specialists echoed her sentiments, and brands began to follow.
“In the long run this could be a gigantic problem if Google starts throwing this out there to all brands,” said Pinny Gniwisch, vice president for marketing of Ice.com, an online jeweler. Gniwisch, who is also on the board of Shop.org, an online retail industry group, said Google’s new feature did not appear when users searched for Ice.com, but he said he would object if it did. “This is essentially giving the customer a way to leave a search for your site,” he said.
The bill, which is starting to gain momentum in the state capital, would likely affect Internet companies on a nation level. They would face difficulties attempting to adjust their policies on a state-by-state level.
A law of this nature would be the first of its kind in the United States, setting an example that will undoubtedly shake companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, whose sponsored search platforms rely on such information.
“What we have with this new technology is a conflict between the economic model of the Internet and consumers’ reasonable expectations of privacy,” Brodsky added.
“If approved, users would have to give explicit authorization for companies to be able to utilize their personal data, such as search patterns.”
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