Read this interesting report:

Survey: US Residents Don’t Want Targeted Ads [IT World]

I’m not totally sure what to make of this survey data. In some ways, it’s totally expected. If you say the words “targeted advertising” to an average person, you’re almost guaranteed to get a negative response. People hate advertising. Advertising that targets you, doubly so.

However, this survey may also reflect a general problem of surveys — lack of context. I wonder what the results would be if you asked Gmail users how many of them hate the little text ads that float above their inbox. Those ads are definitely targeted, but at least personally, they don’t bug me. They’re no worse than regular ads, and sometimes better.

But if you ask Facebook users how many of them hated those ads that use their friends’ faces, I bet you’d get a totally different answer. Just ask this guy who got a Facebook “singles” ad that featured his wife’s photo.

Rather than ask consumers “Do you want targeted ads?” we need to ask advertisers “How can you collect and interpret personal information to provide meaningful advertising?”

Of course, any time a consumer sees and ad that features information they didn’t expect to be publicly available, there’s going to be a shock and turn-off. Maybe the trick is making it transparent how you got the personal information?

Are there any advertisers doing good work in this area?