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TheodoreSmith-ThirdPaper 3 - 10 Jan 2009 - Main.TheodoreSmith
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The Virtual Behavior Laboratory | | | Introduction | |
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< | Over the last 15 years, the World Wide Web (WWW) has developed into a popular means to communicate, share information, and engage in commerce. With the Web’s increasing ubiquity has come ever more sophisticated means for webpages and ISPs to collect and collate usage data. Even as these data effect a revolution in the specificity of targeted marketing techniques, a possible second transformation threatens: the increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Environments (MMOs), typified in games such as World of Warcraft. Although this technology is still developing, the immersive nature of the experience, coupled with the ability of a server to capture and record every aspect of the game, provides marketers with a sophisticated online laboratory for the development of targeted behavioral models and marketing. | >
> | Over the last 15 years, the World Wide Web (WWW) has developed into a popular means to communicate, share information, and engage in commerce. With the Web’s increasing ubiquity has come ever more sophisticated means for webpages and ISPs to collect and collate usage data. Even as these data effect a revolution in the specificity of targeted marketing techniques, a possible second transformation threatens: the increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Environments (MMOs), typified in games such as World of Warcraft. Although this technology is still developing, the immersive nature of the experience, coupled with the ability of a server to capture and record every aspect of the game, provides marketers with a potentially sophisticated online laboratory for the development of targeted behavioral models and marketing. | | |
The Web
At a high level of abstraction, the structure of the WWW protocol is built around a framework of requests and responses: an end user sends a request to the web server and the server responds with the desired information. Although this is a simple and efficient structure for information retrieval, the open nature of the Internet permits these data transactions to be recorded by any entity placed along the path of communications. Once collected, these data may be associated back to the original user and collated to build a model of preferences and interests. Whether this data is eventually used as a marketing tool by the gathering entity or simply sold outright, its existence represents both a powerful tool for targeted marketers, and a danger to the autonomy of the WWW user. | |
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< | While the ability to collect WWW usage data presents a powerful tool for the marketer, the Web is in many ways not an ideal source of such data: a content provider can generally only track the user by the requests his browser makes to the website. Although discrete data can be extracted from this arrangement – what the user is interested in, what advertisements the user fancies, etc. – compiling this data into a useful behavioral model is more difficult, and requires the interested party to fill in the gaps between clicks. This should not be considered an intractable weakness of the medium: it may very well be possible to capture detailed behavioral data through a carefully planned and monitored site. In general, however, current Web marketing tends to focus simply on preference data: matching advertisements with a user’s interests. | >
> | While the ability to collect WWW usage data presents a powerful tool for the marketer, the Web is in many ways not an ideal source of such data: a content provider can generally only track the user by the requests his browser makes to the website. Although discrete data can be extracted from this arrangement – what the user is interested in, what advertisements the user fancies, etc. – compiling this data into a useful behavioral model is more difficult, and requires the interested party to fill in the gaps between clicks. This should not be considered an intractable weakness of the medium: it may very well be possible to capture detailed behavioral data through a carefully planned and monitored site. In general, however, current Web marketing tends to focus simply on preference data: matching advertisements with a user’s interests. | | | MMOs |
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