If we’re to believe Gene Munster (Senior Research Analyst at Piper Jaffray), Google recently tweaked its ad strategy. According to The New York Times, Google’s currently testing a new way to target the ads it shows on its search engine.
Instead of just contextualizing ads based only on the current search, Google is now looking at a bunch of your recent queries. Unlike its competitors (think Yahoo and AOL), Google’s aiming for more precise and flexible targeting—something that can adapt as your searches evolve. Where the others do behavioral targeting based on stuff you searched for days ago, Google wants to focus only on your most recent activity.
Naturally, this kicks off the usual privacy concerns around personal data (in this case, stored in cookies). Officially, those cookies don’t contain anything truly private—like your email, name, or contact info. But the real issue is elsewhere: Google could potentially combine that search data with more sensitive info you’ve entered elsewhere, like during sign-up for Gmail or Google Checkout. And that opens the door—whether Google admits it or not—to links between the ads you see, your search history, and your personal data.
Sure, better targeting might make ads a little less annoying—or even useful. We’re bombarded with so many ads that we’ve just learned to tune them out. But if they were actually relevant, we might actually pay attention. What really bugs me, though, is Google’s ability to merge what it knows about our behavior (from Search or YouTube) with what it knows about our profile (from Gmail or Checkout).
Some data should just stay private—period. Using it for marketing? Nope. I think Google needs to be way more transparent about how it’s protecting user privacy, because it’s hard not to question how honest and open it really is.