I almost let out a chuckle this morning when I saw this article from MediaPost called Privacy Proponents Prompt President-Elect to Police. Why the chuckle? Well I'm on an online discussion group with many internet advertising experts and during the summer I got into a dconversation regarding political marketing and Governor Palin (you probably already know what side I was on). To be perfect blunt, I wasn't trying to get into a heated discussion but correct some facts and get the political discussion removed because it clearly violated the list's policies. One person sent me a particularly nasty personal email attacking me for censorship. Now I wonder what they think of the MediaPost article and that made me laugh.
The article basically wrote how the Center for Digital Democracy lobbied the transition team regarding online privacy and specifically around behavioral targeting. They believe the Bush administration got an F when protecting your privacy. Basically they believe that you are not anonymous and that you should fear the companies that collect your information because you probably don't have a relationship with them. Of course I don't know what they lobbied about and I'm relying on the article for this post.
Anyway back to the chuckle (now a roaring laugh at loud). You see even marketing experts were swayed by the brilliant marketing of Barack Obama. Yet I don't think they ever dug in deep enough into his policies and how those policies would impact them. Sure they saw Google's CEO working for Obama and thought, well it can't impact my business right?
Wrong. If you work at ANY online publisher, agency, or tracking service you better start paying attention now. There have been discussions in the House of Representatives regarding tracking, cookies, and etc and all you need now is a "tech savvy" President greenlighting more regulation and you CAN KISS YOUR BEHAVIORAL TARGETING AND TRACKING GOOD BYE.
It is no secret that I would never have voted for Obama. However, one of the key aspects of his administration is how he holds this coalition together. I believe that Barack Obama stands for many things to many different people and that he connected with people on a one on one basis. So much so, that I think people didn't dig enough into his background to see how his policies will impact them and this is just the opening salvo.
Once I was using a donation lookup service and I saw that my father donated to a Democrat Senator in NJ. My Dad was very much a Republican deep down, so I was shocked to see the donation to a Democrat. I asked Dad why did he make the donation and he simply answered "That Democrat Senator's policies and voting behavior helps the pharmaceutical business and that's where I make my money."
Obama means so many things to so many different people. I wonder how long it takes before he starts disappointing people in policies and regulations that they didn't pay attention to when they were so enamored with his brilliant marketing campaigns.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
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