According to a recent study, 66% of Americans do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. Reading this statement made me wonder: Is that a true feeling, or perhaps was the question worded in the wrong manner? For years, studies have shown that when asked, consumers adamantly believe that advertising doesn’t affect their purchase decisions, but clearly we know that this isn’t true.  So rather than focusing on the negative perception of targeted ads, I wanted to point out some key benefits targeting provides to consumers.

1 – Less advertising
In the ideal world, advertisers truly only want to reach prospects who have interest in their products and services. Any other spending is wasted. Advertisers don’t want to be everywhere; they want to be where their prospects are. So if we can reach better prospects in fewer places, the amount of advertising consumers are exposed to is going to decline.

2 – More relevant advertising
Given my age and gender, I often fall into the “sports loving” demographic profile and, thus, frequently see ads related to sports. But to be honest, I don’t follow sports at all. When I see these types of ads, I usually ignore them, but if I see ads related to things I do like, I pay more attention. While it may be subtle, my consumer experience is better when appropriate ads are immersed in relevant content.

3 – Lower prices
This point may not seem so obvious, but if it’s true that “half of the money spent on advertising is wasted” (J. Wanamaker), more efficient advertising lowers a marketer’s overall costs, which in turn, down the line would result in shifts in pricing strategy. An interesting related side note about this consumer benefit can be found in the the same study, less than 50% of respondents were opposed to receiving discounts tailored to their interests. For those of you who are counting – that’s a 35% shift in attitude compared with tailored advertising.

Given these three points, how do you think consumers would respond to this question: Would you like to see fewer, more relevant ads for products that cost less? I believe you’d see a much different result. There are some very real concerns about consumer privacy that need to be addressed and will be critical to successful behavioral targeting…but there are also significant consumer benefits. So let’s make sure we’re not throwing out the baby with the bath water.