Privacy in Advertising

The article describing the ideas behind RealAge is interesting, but not unique because many companies are doing the same thing in order to create money. Money drives all of these decisions and often times this crosses over into a person’s desire for privacy. The idea is that a person’s confidential information is being exploited by companies that want to sell them products that should appeal to them. They would be appealing because the confidential information is analyzed to determine an appropriate marketing technique. I have a personal interest in this idea of advertising and marketing because I know how a television company views this scenario. They have the idea of using information about a customer’s preference of channels and convert that information into advertisements that they would most likely respond favorably to. This initially seems like a good idea, but the concept of privacy is infringed upon because the television company is using their potentially sensitive information as a means to generate more money from them. The company recognizes this dilemma and that is why they are still determining the appropriate course of action, but there is little doubt that this form of advertising will appear in the near future in some capacity. There is too much money to make for these companies not to explore these opportunities, not to mention the fact that competition will drive companies to out perform the other. If one company is content with resting on their morals and ethics they are going to miss out on profit margins and may be forced to shutdown as a result. This dog eat dog mentality explains almost every business decision and explains why all of them tend to test the limits of what is acceptable and appropriate.