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TBI Research just published an interesting report on behavioral ad targeting focusing on Yahoo’s “Smart Ads” program.

I was particularly interested in the performance data on the ‘creative optimization’ approach, which uses a user’s browsing history to target them with customized messaging:

The Economist had an interesting article this week on the data deluge, in which it argued that, to help users feel like they retain control over their online data, sites need to make more data available to their users:

First, users should be given greater access to and control over the information held about them, including whom it is shared with.

I totally agree that sites should provide greater transparency with respect to tracking and data collection / storage. The Economist highlights Google which allows its users to see what information Google holds about them, and lets them delete search histories or modify the targeting of advertising.

Other sites are increasingly doing this too. For instance, I really like how the Newstogram technology has been implemented on DailyMe.com with a dedicated “My Newstogram” page which shows me what data the site is stored about me, explains how the data will and will not be used, and gives me the ability to correct the data or to opt out of tracking altogether.

Yahoo has similar functionality available through its Ad Interest Manager page (although Yahoo is either tracking a lot less about me or is not as good at determining my interests as they only have me pegged as a generic sports fan).

Last week Google Reader introduced two new features to help users find interesting content. Google claims that one of these, the new and improved Recommended items section, has items “selected just for you”.

Today was the first time I had the chance to play with the Recommended items section and I have to admit to being totally unimpressed. For some reason, Google Reader thought I’d be interested in ctrl+z stationary (above), glass toilets, little people and some research about women’s preference for hairy geeks! In fact almost every item in my Recommended items section was a popular (100+ ‘likes’) photo or cartoon with no relation to the hundreds of items I read every day through Google Reader. If there is personalization happening it is either incredibly subtle or not very good.

Google recently announced it was changing the way ads were selected for placement alongside Gmail messages:

Until now, the ads you’ve seen next to a message were picked based on the content of that message only. For example, if you’re looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago, you might see ads about flights, restaurants or other things relevant to your trip to Chicago.

But sometimes, the ads related to a particular message aren’t good enough. Rather than show less relevant ads, Gmail can now instantaneously serve ads based on another recent message on the same page of your inbox, helping make the ads more relevant to you. For example, if your friend sends you a message to say happy birthday, but there aren’t any good ads to show related to birthdays, you might see ads related to another message in your inbox instead — like flights to Chicago.

As newspapers and other media outlets struggle to develop new online business models, understanding the behavior of different readership segments is critical to success.

Multiple custom variables, then, may be the one new feature everyone from Web producers to publishers is going to want to learn more about. In brief, variables can now be assigned to visitors at three different levels: individual visitor, session or page.

At the visitor level, a tag such as “registered visitor” may be applied to track the behavior of all of your readers in that cohort. At the session level, a tag such as “commenter” could be applied to any visitor who interacts with your commenting system. At the page level, a tag of “sports” could be assigned to any visitor who visits your sports section.

The system will allow up to 50,000 different variables to be defined, each of which can be specified via JavaScript code embedded in your page templates.