U.S. carriers to closely monitor GSMA’s plan to give advertisers user behavior info

New app stores and smartphone platforms are dominating the news out of Mobile World Congress this week, but it’s a quiet little mobile marketing initiative U.S. carriers will be monitoring closely in coming weeks.
Europe’s GSM Association is leading a group of carriers that plans to pool their user behavior data and make the “anonymized” information available to potential advertisers. The operators hope to give mobile marketing a much-needed shove by divulging valuable data such as what sites customers are visiting and for how long as well as demographic information – which users must be submit voluntarily- such as age and gender.
The timing of such a controversial move was unfortunate (if perhaps unavoidable) given recent headlines regarding user-privacy issues on the Internet. Facebook recently raised the ire of its users (again) when it revised terms of its service, forcing CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reassure users that the company’s philosophy “that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant.” And British Telecom this week was threatened with a smack-down by the European Commission related to secret – and allegedly illegal – Internet monitoring trials with the digital technology company Phorm in 2006 and 2007.
A handful of critics haven’t hesitated to lambaste the initiative, claiming the operators “are playing loose and fast with people’s privacy,” among other things.
Those detractors have a bit of a point, of course. The debate about whether any data can safely be “anonymized” in the age of the Internet is questionable, as evidenced by AOL’s mea culpa following a released set of Web-search data regarding more than a half-million users in 2006.
But a lack of granular data regarding mobile data usage has long shackled the mobile-ad industry, and it’s important to note that demographic information – which is key to unlocking those revenues – must be voluntarily divulged by users under the GSMA plan. Consumer watchdog groups may squawk in the face of the new plan, but most surfers on the fixed-line Web have long surrendered to the idea that their actions are tracked – in a relatively anonymous fashion.
U.S. carriers that follow suit risk alienating some users and angering watchdog groups, but the GSMA’s undisguised approach may light the way for American operators – especially if they can find ways to tie consumer cooperation with financial incentives. U.S. consumers weren’t especially outraged to find out that the Bush administration may have been eavesdropping on their conversations in the (dubious) name of national security. So it’s unlikely many of them will give up their Web-surfing info, say, to earn a few free wireless calls. And those opportunities may only increase as the economy slows and consumers seek more ways to tighten their monthly communications spend.