I thought this was very interesting. Mobile Marketing Watch, has a good post on Jumptap, who has received a patent related to using behavioral targeting to influence search results. For search, this is mostly ex-U.S. as far as I’m aware.
Your provider will share data about you (see the list below) with a third party search/adnetwork provider. And you, the customer, will benefit by seeing search results (ads) in an order influenced by this data. Sounds innocent enough and makes the marketer in me drool. As a consumer, I’m a bit uncomfortable with this notion, but I digress. So, is this big news? It is in mobile….but only If there’s scale <sigh> </sigh> The bigger question may be: Will scale come before regulation? My guess is “no,” at least here in the U.S. The current administration is beginning to look hard at behavioral targeting and privacy issues. It feels kinda creepy to me.
Here’s Mobile Marketing Watch’s take on what data will influence the search results:
The data derived from the carrier that influences the search results include:
- Two or more demographics associated with the user, wherein the demographics are obtained from the billing system of the carrier.
- Shopping habits of the user as recorded through use of the mobile communication facility, wherein the shopping habits include views of or purchases of goods or services.
- Duration of on-line interactions by the user from using the mobile communication facility.
- Usage patterns of the mobile communication facility including past mobile communication facility transactions comprising click-throughs.
- Previous search queries entered by the user via the mobile communication facility.