Online Privacy – What do Consumers Really Think?

With the huge leaps forward in technology and commercial strategies and practices, digital marketing has entered its most changeable time to date. This inevitably changes the way that things have to be done, including the way that advertising money is spent. It’s no secret that in the past that digital advertising was the poor relation in terms of proportion of spending, but now 28% of all UK advertising goes to the digital sector, making it the largest of all the markets and in turn making the UK’s internet economy the best in the world.

Being at the forefront of the internet economy brings it’s own challenges, with the public policy and regulatory changes. With the EU ePrivacy Directive and the European Commission's Data Protection proposals having been recently revised, there is a real danger that the UK’s success story could be in danger of becoming a tragedy. This could in turn create a knock on effect where not only innovation could take a hit, but so could employment, the last thing the UK and European economies need in these difficult times. This is something that policy makers need to address, to find a balance between protecting consumers, whilst enabling the demands of those consumers to be met.

According to the independent research carried out by Kantar Media, we now know what consumers  think of internet privacy and this gives us an incite into what can be done to keep the balance mentioned above.

DOM’s Key Conclusions

From the 2,000 interviews carried out in the study, we have made the following 5 conclusions:

1. UK based consumers understand the need for advertising: The savvy UK consumer recognises that advertising helps to pay for much of the online content that they see every day and many (61%) realise that a great proportion of the internet would not be able to exist without this advertising. However only 10% of them would be willing to pay for the content if this advertising was removed.
2. They want advertising that is relevant: This means that the majority of the consumers interviewed (55%) would prefer to only see advertising that is relevant to them and their interests. However, 60% would prefer to see few random or irrelevant adverts than a larger amount of relevant ones.
3. Consumers want to be educated about the way advertising works: The consumer has revealed that they would like to know more about how the relevant advertising gets to them as more than 6 out of 10 consumers expressed concerns about their online privacy. Almost half of them wanted easier access to the information that is shared about them and they would then like more control on the advertising that they are exposed to.
4. Many consumers are already taking active steps: With around 50% of the participants having deleted their cookies in the last 6 months, and around 20% deleting them each week, these consumers are taking big steps to preventing these targeted adverts.
5. No matter what, the internet is vital to today’s society: Despite all of their concerns, desires and needs when it comes to online advertising, well over half of the people in the study admitted that they save greatly by "shopping around" on the internet, with many households saving hundreds of pounds per year.

This research underlines the importance of the balance between advertisers and consumers, with the  improved knowledge of the consumers about the activities of the advertisers, they would be more satisfied and trust the advertisers more. More control for the consumers is a necessity if the UK is to continue to be the front runner in the internet economy, so it is imperative that not only advertisers do their bit, but that the policy makers across Europe enforce this all important balance, for the sake of this huge British online success story.

Written by Jason John Mills