Private social and online media actions for marketers - you feel secured?

At the moment customers are standing on a bit "grey area" what comes to the security of mobile and online advertising. The boom of smartphones and social media has been so enormous that the security part is a bit following the phonemon. During the last week's field trip to Japan's Ministry of Telecommunications we also learned that ministry is concerned about the security of consumers and are making regulations that would ease the current problem. Different sites (Flickr, Google), games, social media sites and applications are able to collect data about users gender, age, preferences, most visited sites, applications, current location, etc., and use this data for targeted advertising.

I noticed an article in China Daily newspaper about the issue which were discussed briefly in the class last week. There was some interesting facts which I wanted to share with you:

- Facebook has total of 1 billion users worldwide
- LinkedIn has 175 million users
- Twitter is following Facebook with half billion users worldwide
- 810 million social network users in Asia (population 3.78 billion)

This social media boom has created an enormous data bank and channel for marketers to promote their products and services. Not forgotting the main point; tarketed marketing. In the article was mentioned that International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) is however a bit wondering if the customers and marketers ever find each other via social media. Audience is not ready for increasing amount of advertisiment on PC and phone. Most likely the effect is that consumers changes the sites or are blogging advertisements like we discussed in the class. We all know that social media is not the only way to promote your campaign to customers, and so called 360 marketing and selections of different methods is the most effective way while you have the precise objectives.

In the article was described very simple stories about new tools. For example customer says in her Facebook profile "Gosh, I have a bad hair day", and hair salon could target something like "Hey, we have an excellent service just two blogs from your office - visit us during the lunch break". I am not a heavy-user for social media but I was still surprised how I got two targeted Facebook advertisements to my news feed; how they knew that I like Nespresso coffee products? Made me wonder.

I guess, we don't see that many people happy about the situation sharing own information and getting real conversation with marketers. People just don't feel secure enough.


Sources:
Ministry of Information and Telecommunication, 2.11.2012
China Daily - Asia Weekly, Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2012, Vol 3, No 42