Public Whupping – Round 2

Now that behavioral targeting vendor NebuAd has skidded off a cliff and burst into flames, it appears that it’s counterpart in Europe, a company called Phorm, is about to follow the same trajectory, and for essentially the same reasons. In both cases the companies have massively underestimated the public response to having a third party track their on-line behavior, and even worse, then sell that data to the highest bidder. The argument that it provides higher relevancy on ads served does not appear to be holding water. It also makes you wonder how carefully this technology was vetted prior to Phorm running out in public screaming “look at me!” I mean, at a minimum they must have seen the whupping NebuAd just went through, and then they go and do the exact same thing? And keep in mind, Europeans are even more finicky about their privacy than Americans, so Phorm is about to step into an even more hostile environment.

How do you get around this type of morass? Embrace your enemy, convert your foes. The first people they should have spoken to were the privacy advocates; there is a way to co-opt people like this, it will be complicated, and may require compromise, but it beats the public humiliation they’re about to go through. This same process has to be followed for analysts and the media that track this space, get the pundits to understand and buy into what you’re selling. There is probably a bit more compromise here as well, but this is what a market-driven launch should look like. Both Phorm and NebuAd are clear examples of an engineering-driven launch, and we can all see how that’s working out.