bArT's log

Image via Wikipedia

The best knowledge in advertising is the mind of the consumer. We call it behavioral marketing. The idea is simple: the closer you get to the customer’s mindset, the better you can target and promote your product and services. To achieve this, you have several solutions:

1. launch huge market studies across the world (very very expensive)
2. monitor the search activities from the “universal start page” (Google)
3. track all the thoughts of the people on various topics (Facebook, Twitter)
4. install tracking cookies on people’s computers to monitor their online activity (this is for sure the best data collection ever)

Every good online marketing company has to be able to offer you such knowledge nowadays if they want to compete in the race of the best ROI.

For the tracked consumer, you have risks, and the European Union does not like this at all. Privacy is a topic of major importance for the Commission and Viviane Reding (previously mentionned), and we can be sure that we will have so nice stories to tell in the coming years…