From TheFutureOf (11 Nov 08): Responding to Steve Jackson’s 16 Sept 08 6:52am comment

(sorry, I don’t have a copy of Steve’s comment)

Pretty much all your questions are answered on our FAQs page, I believe. What isn’t answered there has probably been answered in my presentations. What hasn’t been answered in my presentations is probably best answered in a live conversation as blogversations do not easily allow for course corrections and new learnings to take place. And as most people know, I’m remarkably slow in these things.

“What behavioral targeting does is simply target ads and offers based on your behavior.”

Please define “behavior”. It gets used a lot in these discussions and I’m still sure I don’t understand how it’s being used.

“…behavioral network…”

ditto.

“…you will receive ads based on preferences you have pre-identified or clicks you have
made.”

Challenges with the above start with “pre-identified” and work their way down. Most of those preference selector tableaus reveal much more about their authors than they ever could about the people filling them in. Ditto “clicks”, tritto “have made”, …

“In your scenario after the auditory stimulation they might be *thinking* about food and your offers are presumably designed around this potential situation.”

I believe what I wrote was “they received auditory stimulation while browsing the blog during a pause in their browsing, after that auditory stimulation they started thinking about food”. The neural circuits that trigger for food are easily recognizable and differentiable from other biologic needs. There’s no “might be” involved. The number of psycho-physiologic changes that occur when people are thinking about food are … well, a lot.

“In the behavioral targeting world you wouldn’t know that unless the behavior indicated it. (IE they went to a search engine and typed “burger” – in which case you could serve an advert)”

We might be getting to the crux of thing with the above statement. Even if there’s nothing on a given page that deals with food, even if the reasons an individual came to a site have nothing to do with food, knowing that the individual is now being influenced by hunger allows for a much more precise response range in content provided. This is touched on in From TheFutureOf (7 Nov 08): Debbie Pascoe asked me to pontificate on “What are we measuring when we measure ‘engagement‒”.

I know nothing about Future Now’s offering. I know who they are, of course, and not much more.

We matched our Rich Personae (see InFocus Reports and Personae Mapping Tool because a client asked for it.

“So is your method to design websites based on this kind of principle?”

Have you met Rene, our new CEO? This sounds like a question he can answer better than I. I can put you in touch, if you’d like. (wink wink, nudge, nudge)

“Passion about your subject is required…”

A friend of mine says he never knows where my ego is as I don’t respond to much. I always laugh at that. I’m very passionate about kite flying, music, my family, …, not so much about much else. I’m passionate in my research but am always surprised when others express interest. I suppose I’ve also got it in my head (oh, my god, the pun that’s in the making here) that when I respond passionately to something its due to certain parts of my thalmic and amygdalic clusters responding to environmental signals blah blah blah.

So when I recognize I’m getting passionate (and hopefully before others do) I can begin examining why which leads to a deeper understanding of myself and (more often than not) those interacting with me. This increased understanding often leads to mutual understandings, which often leads to …

“One camp didn’t believe Engagement was a valid metric while the other camp did.”

Again, a surprise to me based on a different metaphysic. If someone doesn’t believe Engagement is a valid metric then don’t use it. It’s an odd thing, I guess. My training is such that if someone told me they were going to design a craft to get to the moon and power it by tying geese to it…well, I’d probably help them because I’d want to learn a) did they know something I didn’t, b) what caused them to have this belief, c) … Then at some point if they ran into difficulties that caused a violation in their metaphysic I could offer “Have you tried eagles? They fly higher, you know…”

JUST KIDDING!

And I do remember that I often have to tell people “I can do or I can teach and we only have two minutes to get this done. Tell me which one you want.” And it still comes down to, “if you don’t accept it, don’t do it.” It’s the inability to move from “this is wrong for me therefore it is wrong for you” that shakes me. I don’t use smartphones and I certainly don’t stop others from doing so, nor do I tell them they’re fools for using them. “Does it make your life easier? Then good for you!” It’s right up there with forcing a new student to use a concert reed on their oboe. Most often all that happens is you kill their desire to learn the oboe. I’d prefer to help someone learn their options and let them make their own decision than force my belief system on them.

“The valid arguments on both sides of the fence added fuel to the fire.”

Remind me to tell you about taking a master class with Neil Simon about presenting valid arguments on both sides of the fence.

AND!!!! I think I’m caught up on all comments and posts. Obviously it’s time for me to start some new research, yes?