Let us grapple with the most recent AOHell security breach. The story is that the details of 20 million searches was posted on an AOL website. Fortunately no readily identifiable information was posted with the search data, but the data itself contained a veritable gold mine. So much extractable data was present that some intelligent reporters were able to pinpoint individual users.
Think of what you have ever entered into a search window. I don’t care if it was MSN Search, AOHell, Google or that Hungarian Porn Search Engine, Ask Mistress Ilsa.
Each search entered goes into a database of what people are looking for: A big list, essentially. If enough people ask the same question, then the site that hosts one of the answers, gets a higher ranking, if enough people click through to it. Yes, the search engines keep all that data including your IP address, again in a big database. What the search engine folks get, at the end of the day, is two lists: What people are looking for and what people in what approximate area looked for it. You then re-sort the two lists into most number of hits and most frequent locations.
To carry the analogy forward with an example, one would expect many of the people searching internet sites in the New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Biloxi area will search a lot of sites regarding FEMA or trailers, or home improvement contractors. Makes sense right? That’s the broadest view.
The tighter view is you can target what individual searchers are looking for. If you take a subscriber in Toronto and look at their list of most recent searches, you might find the Caribana schedule of events, TTC map of the subway system and iTunes to find some music by Toots and the Maytalls. Could one make the assumption that the particular subscriber was interested in going to Caribana in downtown Toronto, by subway, then trying to find some tunes from a fine Jamaican band of the early 70’s. Of course you could.
The problem becomes more acute when you look at what people actually type into search engines. Quite a few people think that Googling their name or their Social Insurance Number, or Driver’s License number is fun. I’m fortunate there is a mathematician with the same name as me and he’s cited in thousands of works and pages, so I don’t Google very well. You might be astounded just how much data about you does exist in readily readable, public form.
A website that I am aware of has an applet called Chinese Wish Sticks. You type in your wish and then press the button to metaphorically drop the wish sticks. The answer to the wish comes up and is displayed to the user: It is like the Magic 8-Ball answer ball of the 60’s. Unbeknownst to the users of the website and the Wish Stick program, the wishes are kept. You will not believe what people will wish for, moreover how much detail they go into when they are forming their wish. Some people would be quite embarrassed if what they wished for ever became publicly known.
This data, what people are interested in, is golden. It is really what search engines sell: Market Intelligence. Most search engines take your query “Green Chinese Pots” and turn around and display something back to you from an advertiser. We have all seen the highlighted and targeted ads for “Want more Green Chinese Pots? Click here for Amazon” or “Improve your sex drive with Green Chinese Pots from CheapDrugsRus.Com”. These are very simplistic marketing messages that are targeted at exactly what you typed into the search engine. Advertisers pay money to the search engine for the privilege of being put right in front of you. Advertisers pay even more if you click on their ad link, in the form of a click through.
On RoadDave Blog Version, you might see some ads along the left hand side in the Sponsored Links box. Those link ads are from MSN and a company called Kanoodle that places ads that are supposedly targeted at you, the strange and under-medicated reader of this blog. For each click-through by you, I get 7 cents. Since the Blog Version has been up, I have generated $1.14 in income. Most of the ads I’ve seen are stock tips and a website for parenting, which tells me these people have no clue what kind of ads to put in front of you, dear reader, so they default to some detritus.
Any search data can tell you a lot about the users. If you cross-tabulate all the searches for “60 year old single men” with “online pharmacy” and then sort off the duplicate users, you have a list of people who would be likely candidates for very specific advertising. This is the stuff that give marketers saucy dreams at night, but it isn’t a new paradigm in advertising. This kind of targeting has been going on for decades.
Take for instance, a trade publication, like Truck and Fleet Manager. The audience is very specific: People who manage and buy fleets of commercial trucks. Consequently you would expect to see advertisements for fleet management computer programs, trade ads from truck, chassis and body manufacturers, oil companies, personnel companies, tire manufacturers and so on. Every ad would talk about the savings per vehicle mile that their wonder-product would produce for the fleet manager. The advertiser knows that the reader is vitally concerned with all the things that go into managing a fleet of trucks. There would be no reason to have ads for lipstick, pantyhose or summer dresses. Perhaps if the publication was called Cross-Dressing Truck and Fleet Manager it would work, but I think we’re getting into a very, very limited subset of the global audience of Truck and Fleet Managers.
The AOL data leak is not quite the hideous privacy invasion it has been made out to be in the media. What it really exposes is how much data is being collected on the Internet about your searches and how that data is being used by advertisers to beat you to death with accurately targeted advertising. It also exposes the seamy underbelly of the Internet and the whole money for data sale that has been going on since shortly after the Internet started. Internet Service Providers and Advertisers really don’t want you to see that part of the business for fear you start throwing odd terms into your searches. If enough people enter “Blue Divot Markers” into a search window, a marketing and statistics weenie will want to know the reason people are looking for Blue Divot Markers.
If they want to know what “Blue Divot Markers” are, you can always refer them to RoadDave. I just made that name up, but it does make for a really cool product name. Now, if only I can figure out what a Blue Divot Marker is, or does, or can do, I’ll be set.
This strikes at the real heart of marketing. Today, whole companies are devoted to finding those little tiny stirrings in the data that might lead to the Next Big Thing. They don’t look at the mass of data; they are digging in the exceptions and odd phrases that stick out. “Blue Divot Markers” will be the Next Big Thing, as long as you enter it the next time you use any of the big search engines. I’ve already tried it on Ask Mistress Ilsa, but I did use someone elses’computer, if only to throw them off.
RoadDave 