Hasta La Creative!

There’s probably more to come from Edward Snowden’s unfolding expose of U.S. government spying, but polls suggest that Americans are already resigned to trade some privacy in exchange for identifying terrorists. It’s a bureaucracy doing it, after all, so it’s probably done poorly, and it’s not as if the government doesn’t already scrutinize our tax records, register every piece of snail mail we post and, in some states, make us jump through extraordinary hoops to do things like vote and exercise rights otherwise guaranteed by the Constitution.

But what happens if consumers figure out how regularly, deeply and expertly we marketers track their behaviors, and in doing so blur the line between between convenience and manipulation?

Our snooping puts the National Security Agency to shame. From the level of the internet service provider, through to social-media platforms and websites, and including apps, ads and clickable content (like videos), we collect a vast amount of information on consumers’ online behavior (and their geophysical location), then use it to tee-up search results, info and ads to millions of people millions of times every day ideally to each one of them uniquely so. We don’t do it to keep anybody safe, however. We do it to sell stuff. It’s the mercenary make-money benefit we gain through all of that non-commercial friending and conversing we do with consumers.

Continue reading at AdAge.com