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Today I came across an article by Isaac Weisberg, titled Unintended Consequences of Targeting: Less Information, Less Serendipity – Part I . In this article Isaac argues that online personalization limits the exposure of information to the individuals. I agree that current personalization practices are very limited though it is more of an issue with the marketers engaged in personalization than with the technology. ( Note: Retargeting , Behavioral Targeting , on-site recommendations, customized emails etc. are all different forms of personalization). So it is not Personalization that limits the flow of information but it is the people engaged in Personalization. The purpose of personalization is to provide information that is relevant to an individual and in order to do so you will eliminate a lot of information that the person is not likely to be interested in. However that does not mean that the person cannot be exposed to new information with the personalization. The issue is tha...

HiPPO is an overly used in the web analytics community to make the web analysts feel good. But this term, in my opinion, does more harm than good to you. Though I meant to write this post a long time ago, today a post by Steve Jackson - HiPPO could be your best friend finally prompted me to write it. For those how don’t know, HiPPO is a term used to describe the opinion of the Highest Paid Person (HiPP) i.e. Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. This terms basically says that the person who gets paid the most (it assumes that this person is also the highest authority position) will make decisions that are not based on any facts but rather based on his/her gut feel. As a result his/her opinions are generally wrong. Really? Do you really think that they got into their position by giving wrong opinions? Some experts even encourage analysts to publicly embarrass HIPPOs by proving them wrong? Really? How do you think it is going to help you? Will you have a job tomorrow? As an analyst, your...

FTC’s proposed a framework to protect the privacy of consumers . Part of this framework is a “Do Not Track” option that has raised a lot of questions among the web analytics and advertising community. Well since this is just a proposal at this stage nobody knows how it will finally pan out. At this point FTC has published the report to seek public comments. The report that FTC has put together is 122 pages long. I have extracted some important point from that report in case you don’t have the time to read the full report. The basic building blocks of this framework are: Scope : The framework applies to all commercial entities that collect or use consumer data that can be reasonably linked to a specific consumer, computer, or other device. Note: This is not limited only those who collect PII data, if you collect any information about a consumer then this applies to you. However commission is seeking input on how to determine “reasonably linked to a specific consumer…” Privacy by De...