Information Is A Spam Filter

You know what the best thing about being in a relationship is? You don’t get those annoying “Meet single 18 year old girls” ads on Facebook.

Upon this realisation, it reminded me of an argument I once had with a tutor. The class discussion was about database marketing, and her advice to students was to never sign up to any competition because your details will be used to spam you.

Perhaps it’s the naive utopian young marketer still yet to be beaten out of me by the industry, but isn’t the more knowledge a brand has about you the better?

Of course there will be brands who sell this information on to others. But ideally, brands can use this to reduce the amount of spam you’re receiving, not increase it. Ads become more targeted, personalised and therefore more relevant.

At the end of the day, ads are inevitable. And I personally would prefer brands to know as much as possible about me to make these ads as useful and value providing as they can be. And by definition, they no longer become spam.

5 Comments
  • Anonymous
    Posted at February 16, 2010 9:24am, 16 February Reply

    Interestingly, being in a relationship doesn't rule you out from ads for manhunt.net

    I guess they really do know their target market.

  • Lachyw
    Posted at February 16, 2010 10:42am, 16 February Reply

    Good post, I really agree that advertisers are gaining more and more power to make their advertising a whole lot better.

    Whether or not they take action on that is yet to be seen.

    But what about a situation like this… http://bit.ly/2RhaVC … too much? That may seem a way off, but you could walk into a store and basically receive that to your mobs via bluetooth.

    Foursquare is a big step forward in that sense I think, because by checking in you're in a way giving permission for the venue to market to you.

    All that aside, I can't believe your tutor gave you that advice!!! I got much better advice from one of my lecturers that we should sign up for EVERYTHING (perhaps using a second email address) so we could see how it all works and get a first hand view of both the good and the bad.

  • nat
    Posted at February 18, 2010 11:12am, 18 February Reply

    Good point Zac. Targeted, informed valuable ads = Helpful. Untargeted, uninformed scattered ads = SPAM.
    (I'm sure hearts are breaking everywhere in the blogosphere upon hearing the news you are no longer single) 😛

  • Stan Lee
    Posted at February 18, 2010 2:15pm, 18 February Reply

    Is it just me or did you fluff piece linking to Jules' story about facebook disappear?

    And if so, why?

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at February 18, 2010 2:25pm, 18 February Reply

    @ Stan Lee

    Because it was nothing more than a fluff piece, and one I later disagreed on.

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