Couple of interesting articles related to analytical techniques

Omniture: Visitor Engagement is just a fad!

http://blog.webanalyticsdemystified.com/weblog/2008/07/omniture-visitor-engagement-is-just-a-fad.html

Eric Peterson’s blog countering Omniture’s statement about visitor profiling being a fad. Personally, I agree with Eric on this one. Visitor profiling is a great technique if applied appropriately. It allows you to build a picture of your customers over time, and thus enabling marketers to tailor their communications. Of course this is only relevant if you have the ability to then communicate with each relevant customer segment. The counter to this is that the web/email have allowed for massive economies of scale. By introducing visitor profiling it allows you to create customer segments, which can be targeted with more relevant messages which should, in turn, improve conversion. The real question as the moment is whether it actually has a positive ROI. Creating new creatives/communications for each customer segment is time consuming even if the actual deployment can be automated.

Consumer Attitude towards Behavioral Targeting

http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/07/consumer-attitude-towards-behavioral.html

A brief blog on people’s attitudes towards behaviorally targeted ads. In many ways no real surprise: People want less intrusive and more relevant ads (if any), but do not like the idea of having their behaviour tracked to facilitate this. Personally, I like the idea of being able to rate ads (bit like the face book model), whereby your response will effect what you see. For example, a user could click on an ad and request not to be shown it again, but could be offered the choice of alternative ads or areas of interest. In many ways this would be a win/win situation, as the advertisers would know that people had seen the original ad (even though they chose not to see it again) along with their thoughts on the ad. The users on the other hand get to choose what ads they see in the future, which could even be linked across sites via the Open ID technology (bit like msn passport). The difference here is that the user would be in control, and would be able to manage their own exposure to ads. Advertisers could also benefit as popular ads may be spread by word of mouth, in a fashion similar to that seen on youTube.

So what do you think? Is visitor profiling doomed, or a waste of time? Should behavioural targeting continue or is privacy more important? Is it different to the offline world of store loyalty cards or using a bank card?

Let me know your thoughts?