MediaFlect

If you’re an advertiser, Google History, which I wrote about yesterday, is the best thing since, well, there is no “since” because never before has an advertiser been able to potentially know all someone’s media activity and target ads based on it.

Google History tracks not only your Google searches but also, if you let it, all your Web surfing activity. Imagine the power of being able to target someone based on exactly what sites they’ve visited — even to weight the ads after guaging their level of interest, based on the sites they visited, how much they surfed each one, even which pages they went to within those sites — perhaps even how many links they clicked or what they did.

Here’s a little look at my Google History for one short period of time.

I looked up some software plugins, a New York media group, and Niagara Falls (my wife wants to visit the region this summer). Already, you know a lot more about me than you did, and if you wanted to target me with an ad you’d have some darn good ideas of what might work.

Thanks to Jack Myers for inviting me to write a column for his Jack Myers Media Business Report. The first one went out last week, and today appears on Jack’s Media Village Web site.

The nut of it: Google’s got a looming issue over privacy, because of all the data it collects on people — from Gmail to Blogger to Google Ads and Analytics — and it had better be out front on this issue, or it could pay a high price in the long run.

The argument’s been further bolstered by Google’s new “Web history” initiative, which I learned about from Shelly Palmer, also in a column for Jack. The search engine will, if you let it, track not only all your Google searches, but if you download a toolbar, ALL your Internet surfing activity, and spit it back to you. I’ve allowed it to see only my Google searchess, and it’s an intriguing peak at what I’ve used Google for in recent days (wow, do I use it a lot!). It’s also a little creepy to think that someone could, some day, take a look and see everything I looked at — be it business or personal, prurient or pure. I can imagine the picture someone could draw about me, or anyone, and am not sure it’s a picture we’d like others to have access to.