Google Smackdown: Susan Wojcicki vs. Eric Schmidt Boomerangs
“Google wary of behavioral targeting,” is the latest Google PR pitch backed up by mainstream media (Reuters) and dutifully echoed by the blogosphere.
Google employee “number 18,” VP Susan Wojcicki spun a Googley good tale for “reporters” yesterday at the Googleplex:
“Google is shying away from the industry race to deliver tools for advertisers that stitch together a user’s various online actions into one profile.”
Could it really be true? Why is Google fighting tooth and nail then for the right to fork over $3.1 billion in cash for DoubleClick behavioral targeter extraordinaire?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is fond of lavishing inordinate praise on Wojcicki. it is inconceivable that she is unaware of the behaviorial targeting business DoubleClick is in and of Google’s determination to acquire the DoubleClick business.
Nonetheless, to refresh the Google VP’s memory, a primer on DoubleClick Booomerang, heralded by DoubleClick as delivering “true behavior driven advertising” designed to “leverage the power of behavioral targeting”:
1) User visits client Website looking for a product and browses, but does not make a decision. The user is “now tagged” as an interested prospect in a Boomerang List.
2) User continues Web browsing, visiting a site where the client has an ad campaign already running. Dart for Advertisers recognizes the visitor (thanks to the Dart cookie ID), and serves a targeted ad offering free shipping.
3) Qualified prospect clicks on Boomerang-targeted ad and is taken back to client Website to take advantage of free shipping offer.
Google has famously not accepted third party ad tags under the guise that “we don’t do anything to compromise the user experience on Google properties or across our AdSense network.”
In its Google Speak FAQ on its DoubleClick transaction, however, Google says:
We did not accept third party tags because we could not guarantee the quality of the ad or that it would comply with our format policies. (BUT) working with DoubleClick we will increase the relevance of ads online so that we maintain a positive user experience while providing targeted ad opportunities for advertisers and increased monetization for publishers.
Wojcicki’s media op comes as the Google DoubleClick proposed merger is stymied due to FTC and Congressional privacy and competition concerns. The top Google exec’s “briefing” for reporters yesterday appears self-serving and disingenuous:
While expanding beyond one-for-one correspondence between a consumer’s Web search and the ads displayed, Google says its ad targeting remains rooted in search activity rather than trying to deduce relationships from other sorts of user information.
The Google official stressed that this effort to improve ad relevancy does not involve personal information databases. “What we are very careful about is traditional behavioral targeting,” Wojcicki said. “Nothing is stored, nothing is remembered. It all happens within that session.”
Wojcicki’s fear no Google behavioral targeting cry is also in stark contradiction with the Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s frequent talk of an all knowing Google.
One year ago, I heard Schmidt share his vision for in-car, targeted, personalized radio advertisements that would literally speak directly to the driver about his/her personal needs.
Last May, I heard Schmidt wax poetic of Google as Big Brother:
With the personal version of Google, iGoogle, the computer will get to know you so well, it will say good morning, you are late this morning, but you are always late; It will almost understand how you think and mimic behavior.
Schmidt vs. Wojcicki then? Or is Wojcicki the chosen Google “spoksesperson” for DoubleClick storytelling?
Google can not unspin itself from the incredulous and incongruous “Google wary of behavioral targeting in online ads” line fed to Reuters.
Google DoubleClick is a behavioral targeter and Eric Schmidt wants all of Google to know its users better than they know themselves.
The New York State Consumer Protection Board is not duped; It issued a oonsumer alert urging New Yorkers to “take action to protect your privacy”:
Goggle, Inc. plans to buy DoubleClick Inc. This merger presents significant privacy implications. The combination of DoubleClick’s Internet surfing history generated through consumers’ pattern of clicking on specific advertisements, coupled with Google’s database of consumers’ past Internet searches, will result in the creation of “super-profiles,” which will make up the world’s single largest electronic repository of personally and non-personally identifiable information. Without appropriate safeguards, this database could, for example, be made available without consumers’ knowledge or consent to secondary users, including vendors of personal data, as well as made public as evidence in litigation or through data breaches.
THE REAL GOOGLE HEADLINE? BE WARY OF GOOGLE BEHAVIORAL TARGETING IN ONLINE ADS!
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