Are Privacy and Personalization Mutually Exclusive

If the last several months have made one thing clear, it’s that marketers cannot ignore consumers’ privacy demands.

From the Wall Street Journal’s widely publicized “What They Know” series, to a recent story in the New York Times on behavioral retargeting, public interest in digital privacy is at an apex.  In large part, we can thank Facebook for this. Its April “instant personalization” initiative turned what was a brushfire into an all-out firestorm, making it utterly confusing to opt out of the program. Even technically savvy users struggled to navigate the privacy settings.

Preston Gralla at Computerworld went so far as to suggest we need a Do-Not-Track list as many others have been lobbying for since the behavioral targeting debate first ignited a couple of years ago. This would resemble the federal ‘Do Not Call Registry’ that lets you be placed on a list that bans telemarketers from calling you.

One thing that is being overshadowed in this privacy discussion is the fact that consumers increasingly expect a personalized online experience that makes it easy for them to meet their needs. They have dwindling patience and will go elsewhere if sites fail to meet their expectations. Consequently, online businesses today are faced with the tough task of meeting those demands while keeping their users’ privacy rights in mind.

Businesses are now faced with a huge conundrum. How do you give consumers two things they want that, at face value, seem mutually exclusive?

In my opinion, privacy and personalization are not mutually exclusive, they shouldn’t have to be and it’s human nature to desire both.  Personalization approaches can encompass a broad spectrum. On one end are those, such as Facebook’s, that rely heavily on the social graph and assume the more information you have about the individual the better. On the entire opposite end of are more implicit forms of personalization that are anonymous and don’t collect personal information. Baynote believes there is huge value in the latter, which is why our focus has always been on trying to find out more information on a user’s intent (what do they need right now) and not necessarily information about the actual user. Said in another way, Baynote makes it less about the individual and more about the individual’s real-time needs. It’s a seemingly small, but important distinction.

The web is only moving toward being even more personal. We can’t, as businesses or individuals, run away from that. Instead, the key moving forward will be finding ways to balance marketing initiatives with users’ simultaneous demands for privacy and a more personalized web experience.

P.S.  if you’d like a nice introduction to Personalization, check out this American Marketing Association webcast.