A company called AlmondNet, run by Micha and Roy Shkedi is unveiling a new advertising program that teams up with users ISP’s and a network of website partners to deliver relevant advertising.
Now search engines and other companies have been using cookies to track users movements within a website for years. AlmondNet, however, wants to go a step further and track users movements throughout the Internet, and through these movements make an educated guess of what kinds of ads to deliver up on partner websites.
Let’s say you go from one website to the next search for antiques. AlmondNet will track this and when you land upon a partner site, they will deliver ads for antiques in front of your face.
On their website, they even proclaim “Site Visitors: See relevant, privacy-sensitive ads everywhere.” First, do you want to see ads everywhere? Second, they’ve had to invade your privacy in order to deliver these relevant ads to you, so how “privacy-sensitive” can they be?
Its like having a census taker or a personal marketer follow you around, making notes on every step you take and every product you reach for just so that when you are in the check out line in one of their stores, they can stack the candy counter with products you cannot resist.
Now this anti-advertising sentiment may sound strange coming from an Internet marketer such as myself. But I am a regular person first and as a regular person I want the Internet to be a place for information first and I do not want it to turn into a long series of infomercials. Second, as a regular person, I am also a privacy advocate. I do not like the thought of Big Brother watching me (or even Big Half-Brother – Big Business).
Sure, information and marketing can coexist on the Internet and should coexist. But there has to be a balance. And any time I see that balance tip towards having yet another Home Shopping Network, then I think its time to say, “Enough!”
Let’s let customers decide what they wish to purchase without placing a 24/7 spycam on them to track their every movement. I doubt if Micha and Roy would like their every moves followed by a zoom camera and digested by a supercomputer and sold back to them at the Internet candy counter.
Just my 2 cents (while supplies last)
