Advertising and the NFL are fraternal twins.  So, it is not surprising that the approaching start of the NFL season would draw our attention.  The size of the audience, its shared interests, spending power and direct link between call and action are online-like in their effectiveness.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area the new season has brought all things Raiders and 49ers to the fore.  And though the battle between overall number one pick in the 2005 draft Alex Smith and journeyman (7 teams in 7 years) J.T. O’Sullivan has captured a lot of attention, I am drawn to the Raiders and their Quixotic search for proof of the team’s “Commitment to Excellence.”

Like any company seeking to gain notice in a consumer’s consciousness, the Raiders cannot attain “excellence” unless they achieve relevance.  The season will tell if adding Russell, McFadden, Hall and Wilson to the mix will do the trick, but the draft picks and free agent signings have people paying attention.  If the team performs, relevance will lead to revenue.

Relevance — and its link to revenue — also has people paying attention more to Google these days, too.

Look one way and you can see that the company has proven to be somewhat immune to the turbulence others feel during the current economic downturn.  Long-time links between advertisers and even strong venues are being broken.

Look the other way and find that Google is being pressed in court to prove its commitment to relevance.  These suits, three so far, claim that delivering ads to web pages that offer no content undermines the value of the pitch.

I guess it depends on the definition of “content.”  Is content a story about big game hunting or is it enough that someone seek out www.biggamehunting.com to make the ads for guides and gear relevant? Google has long sought and will continue to strive to be the best source of the best answer to the question:  “What do you want?”

Certainly its search expertise is atop the market, so it was no surprise when they launched AdSense for Domains three or four years ago.  In this program, a web address sought by a user — whether a branded site or not — is seen as a window into the person’s interests.  Google gave domain owners the opportunity to showcase relevant ads to the people who made the trip.

Historical credit does not always ensure future success (velcro is my favorite example).  And the health of the economy, even when it improves, will continue to make advertisers adamant.  The pressure will not abate on the algorithms, link relationships and key words that now approximate relevance.  Ultimately, even Google will need to know.  And the only way that can happen is to ask.

All the industry needs, just like the Raiders, is a commitment to relevance.  Revenue and excellence are its trailing indicators.

This week came word from ValueClick that it has raised the ante for behavioral targeting.  In its own words, the company is “…combining access to a wealth of anonymous consumer online behavior with an innovative predictive technology to create the most robust and scalable behavioral targeting solution available to marketers.”  Hmmm, “anonymous” information?  How anonymous is online data?

As long as nine years ago, privacy advocates raised the concern that the merger of DoubleClick and Abacus would bring together “…Net surfing habits obtained from the 5 billion ads DoubleClick serves per week and the 2 billion personally identifiable consumer catalog transactions recorded by Abacus.”

Two years ago, AOL had to issue a painful, public apology for the release of anonymous research logs that, when taken together, told some very personal stories.  And last year, when Google bought DoubleClick, objections on the same grounds were brought before the U.S. Congress.

The most recent testimony by the privacy lobby on behavioral targeting asks that Congress step in where commerce has failed.  They say sharing online consumer behavior ought to be the subject of opt-in programs only.

But, if online behavior can ultimately be knit together to tell a personal story, then any program that allows it can be said to be opening the door to abuse.  In this way, opt-in is no different from opt-out.  The real check on behavior comes with what the wonks call “notice” and what the rest of us call a “reminder.”

People sign up for stuff every day.  Newsletters, word-a-day vocabulary builders, jokes, blog feeds in an area of personal interest among them.  In a week or a month or a year, the stuff still comes, but do we even remember when or why we signed up?  If each program asked its users to say “yes” on a regular basis, not only would the consumer relationship be stronger, it would be more valuable.

A good example of how a reminder can work from from AOL nee Tacoda.  In late 1996, the behavioral targeting company announced its “Consumer Choice Initiative” that uses regularly scheduled “ads” to remind people other their participation and provide an opportunity to opt-out.  In 2007, AOL committed to implement and expand the program.

Negotiating a balance between transparency and control is vexxing.  What those who have read posts on this blog in the past know is that Rabio is a classic opt-in company.  We avoid the need to balance by offering total control to our members.

Opt-out has long been the default choice for online commerce.  And the data problems, real or imagined, that have occurred on opt-out’s watch have made people think opt-in might be a better way to go.  Ultimately it will be clear and persistent notice that gives consumers the protection and access to online services they want.

When it comes to privacy, arguing for pre-emptive controls can score points, but it doesn’t always win the game.  Take for example Members of the U.S. Congress whose most recent stance in favor of an opt-in requirement for behavioral targeting online advertising programs ignored the lessons of their own electoral history.

If helping chose those who govern our lives can be judged a compelling “value,” how come only 48 percent of eligible voters actually pulled the lever or punched the chad or connected the dots in the 2006 elections?  Registering to vote is a classic opt-in choice that many people decline.

Admittedly, running for office and running an ad are not the same.  But if a citizen is unwilling to opt-in to vote, which has real outcomes, will a consumer opt-in to more relevant advertising?  Yet more relevant advertising, with some protection built in, is what consumers are clamoring for.

A March 2008 report released by TRUSTe, the online privacy watch dog group, found that nine out of ten consumers would “take necessary steps to assure increased privacy online when presented with the tools” to do just that.  You could argue that opting-out is a pretty good tool.  The same study also found 64 percent of consumers would “choose to see online ads” from companies they selected.

In truth, opt-out is pretty standard.

The technologies and practices built to deliver better, more relevant advertising should be encouraged in a society built on commerce.  The question to ask is not “What is the worst that can happen?”  The question to ask is:  “Are there safeguards in place to deal with the bad actors?”

Thanks to the success of programs like Google AdSense, we are conditioned to think that advertising works best when wrapped in a cloak of complementary content. Search for the number of air miles between New York and Costa Rica and you’ll get a paid search or text ad for the airlines that fly the route.

The belief extends well beyond text ads, too. At www.espn.com you’ll get the sports scores and ads for Hummer, DirectTV and Verizon mobile. Visit Fortune magazine’s website and you’ll be pitched by UPS, TheLadders and all manner of high-speed ‘net access providers. At www.marthastewart.com they may stretch the demographic envelope a bit, but there is a comforting synergy between the recipes and the ads for Raw Natural Beauty products, Wyndham Hotels and a “better than botox” Iqderma you will find there.

Comforting but confining. The men and women who go to each of these sites (they do!) have interests that reach well beyond the content of the moment. In fact, if each of these publishers (and the thousands like them) were to ask their readers, the ad sales execs would be able to significantly expand the number of advertisers they could call upon. And the advertisers ought to be willing.

The fellow who visits ESPN may also be a Dad keen on travel, leisure and vacation deals; the early career executive who speed reads Fortune may also be an outdoors person, keen to know when camping, cycling or hiking gear goes on sale; and the woman who is a regular at Martha Stewart may be into classic cars.

By selling to the consumer and not just the content, a single site can open wide the aperature on effective advertising.

Word this week that St. Louis-based Charter Communications has decided to back away from a deal with NebuAd to test behavioral targeted advertising at the ISP level is another exhibit in the public trial pitting online advertisers’ attempts to typecast consumers who want to maintain control of their identity — and personal information.

This is not a new battle; in a not-too-distant past, marketers used direct mail, mall stops or a dinner-time phone call to push consumers’ buttons on the basis of Zip codes or age or education.  This “give-and-take” has followed us all online where the technology makes it possible to know everything all at once.  If we do, goes the advertiser’s surmise, we can deliver highly relevant ads.

Companies like Tacoda and Revenue Science have made a mark by linking advertisers and publishers; but they operate at the website level.  Moving to the ISP level, where all traffic is visible to the provider, seems a more compelling model for an advertiser, but it raises too many hackles on the necks of consumers — and Congress.  Just a month ago, Charter got a bi-partisan earful from Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).

The Center for Democracy and Technology was on the right track when it asked that consumers get “unavoidable notice, express opt-in and revocable consent” in testimony to the Network Advertising Initiative, an advertising industry group supporting self-regulation for a host of practices, including behavioral targeting at the ISP level.

All this is hard work for advertisers, publishers and even consumers.  We are rarely willing to exert the effort and hardly ever at the same time.  Fortunes have been built on the float.

But with the prospect of real regulation putting steel in the self-regulation efforts, with consumers and their advocates making demands in a buyers’ market and the ability of technology to create insight as well as intrusion, a market shift will soon occur.  It will soon be “ask, don’t tell.”

For the last nine months, Rabio has been a company at the intersection of two things people care deeply about – marketing and online privacy.  This blog has sought to highlight the tensions and opportunities those interests create.

As active members of each community – I personally have 30 years in marketing and public relations and a dozen as a visible and vocal privacy advocate — we have seen advertisers deploy increasingly intrusive technologies in pursuit of insight that only might make ads relevant and have heard consumers complain about a lack of control over their own computers.

There is a better way.  We call it a user-directed advertising network.  Our primary promotional vehicle for the UDAN is our consumer-facing website, www.consumeradvocatecentral.com.

Rather than guess at what people want, we ask.  We don’t track, trace or eavesdrop.  Instead, we offer a browser helper object (a plug-in) that allows users to set and manage, at will, their own advertising preferences.  There is no charge for the software.  Our business model is based on making Rabio a partner to advertisers.

Out goal is to offer both greater ad relevance and tighter consumer privacy.

It is our plan to take the stated preferences and enroll publishers and advertisers to sign on.  Our belief is that greater relevance will lead to higher value for the businesses that deploy Rabio.

Beyond our primary software download, Rabio’s “Search Enhancer,” we offer two additional products under a trURL (“true-are-ell”) banner (http://consumeradvocatecentral.com/trurl.shtml).

The first, RightSite, is available now.  It recognizes misspelled brand name domains and directs Rabio users to the right site.  If a user mistypes, for example, the address “microsift.com,” they’ll be directed to Microsoft.com.  The second, Foresight, will embed the names of sites identified as serving as the source of malware – spyware, adware and viruses, to name three – and warn users of the danger.

Most of the people who have downloaded the software – that number is closely held right now – have been recruited by distribution partners who share our commitment to being open about our efforts.  Each of our partners showcases the Rabio end user license agreement in the four-step process leading to a download.

We are angel funded (a single, strategic investor) and, as is normally the case, it is going both faster and slower than planned.  So far, though, the results so far have given us confidence that tenacity will reveal a real business.

It is a simple idea that may change an industry.

I had the good fortune to attend the Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference last week in Carlsbad, California.

I say “good fortune” because while no one can quibble with the intent of an organization like the Journal to pull together a provocative program, it worked not only on the visible, macro level (the confluence of Ballmer and Yang with a dash of Diller added real insight to the so-far-failed Yahoo!/Microsoft merger talks, for example), but also on a more micro, motivational level.

It was Sir Howard Stringer of Sony, whose view of the marketplace made me think that Rabio really was on to something. He said: “This is the era of total customer choice;” among other things.

That is the essence of our insight. What is true for televisions and digital cameras, is true for advertising. too.

It was Barry Diller of IAC who made it personal. In his interview with the Journal’s Kara Swisher, he said: “I think there is a certain amount of stupidity in tenacity. Once you get something out in the marketplace there is always going to be someone who takes issue with it.”

At some level, starting something new, trying to remake an industry from the inside-out, often seems more difficult than its reward. But if we are successful by giving publishers and advertisers a better way to relate to consumers, then the journey will have been worth the effort.

I must renew my subscription to the Journal.

At P&G the CEO says the CEO is not the boss; A.G. Lafley says the consumer is.  Whether in a recent issue of Fortune Magazine or TIME or in his book, “The Game-Changer,” he offers not just the strategy but the practical:  “Openness is just so important. If your mind’s not open, you can’t even interact with a customer.”

Afterall, “The consumer is the key at the end,” Lafley says. “If we can get her or him involved at the beginning, we have a much better chance at success.”

He is not the first business person to attempt to seed a customer-first mantra.

My favorite is either “The customer is always right, ” coined by Wisconsin’s Harry Gordon Selfridge who founded his department store in London in 1909 or its mirror image from French hotelier César Ritz who said “Le client n’a jamais tort” - “The customer is never wrong” at about the same time.

In the past — even the recent past with corporate commitments like that of Google to “Don’t be evil” — such attempts have been ultimately nicked or set aside because they require an investment that may become a short-term competitive disadvantage.  Credit to company’s like Southwest Airlines and Nordstrom’s from staying the course.

Lafley’s advice and the proof of its value may help add to that list of companies.  His focus is not on the point-of-sale, but on the point-of-creation.  By involving consumers before design, materials and marketing combine to create a product, P&G stands a better chance of increasing its sales.

The key is to focus on collaborative creation. Perhaps a liberal return policy won’t be needed.

There was great empathy in the theater back in 2001 when Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, playing male models Derek Zoolander and Hansel, physically attacked an iMac in “Zoolander” because they were told the program they needed was, yes, “In the computer.”

With each passing day we learn there is quite a lot going on inside our computers; much of it equally mysterious. The problem for many online consumers is that we learn only about what’s going on secondhand.

Despite an advertised commitment to choice, most of us aren’t given one.

It was Henry Ford who put it most bluntly when he said, about his Model T, “The customer can have any color he wants so long at it’s black.” He was merely updating the view of Thomas Hobson whose famous choice was really no choice at all; more a “take it or leave it.”

In the not too distant past, we were given the convenience of e.commerce only to learn our personal data was being bought and sold. Look back a bit farther and you find the benefits of e.mail overwhelmed by spam. Today, the manner in which we are tracked, traced and otherwise followed about online by advertisers seeking to guess as what we might be interested in buying is only the latest revelation.

How come this keeps happening? Well, as consumers, we are complicit.

The literary insight of William Shakespeare, who gives Cassius these words: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings” is matched by research that says when given a choice, we don’t take it.

Take a look at a recent paper from three well-place and well-lettered business school professors on the point. Here are two bits from “Smart Defaults: From Hidden Persuaders to Adaptive Helpers:”

1. European countries with opt-in organ donor pools had less than a quarter of the population make the choice, while opt-out systems saw 99 percent participation
2. Neighboring U.S. states required drivers to choose either a high-cost insurance policy and the right to sue or a low-cost policy without the right to sue. With the inexpensive policy as the default, 21 percent purchased the right to sue. The more expensive default gave 70 percent the right to sue.

Bringing the online world — and advertising — into better balance for consumers when we make simple choices that have staying power. Like subscribing to an anti-spyware service (either individually or by way of your internet access provider). You make the decision once, the service does the work to keep current. You can increase the security settings on your browser, too.

There are a lot of tools available to us that give users a bit more control. Ultimately, though, even the tools require choices be made. And the best first choice may be to work with companies who give you tools that are easily understood and controlled. In the spirit of full-disclosure, that is our business.

Before the world went online, the issues were the same, they just didn’t play out globally and in real-time. As William Bernbach, the “B” in the advertising agency, DDB, once said: “In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.”

Cynicism is enervating; control can be exhilarating.

Whether it’s a lyric like those in “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor,” from Paul Simon’s “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon” or U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s oft-repeated line, “I know it when I see it” from the decision in the Jacobellis v. Ohio obscenity case or a humorous observation of the sort that “minor” surgery is what they do on you, “major” surgery’s what’s on done me, the same action can have many different reactions.

This is true, too, in the technologies each of us relies on more each day — whether we know it or not.

The market noise surrounding the rise of mobile advertising — your cell phone is now a “sell phone” — and the the launch of Phorm, a UK partnership of ISPs that will target advertising to consumers’ surfing patterns, are only the most recent examples. Among online advertisers, there is a great need to offer relevant ads; that’s what people want. But the methods have been called a threat to those people’s privacy. One act, many reflections.

This makes it hard to set standards implementation of intrusive technology because you might not see it as intrusive at all. One answer is that it is generational. Baby Boomers may just have to get out of the way of the Millenials. Ultimately, it is a matter of control.

If you don’t like the television show, you can change the channel; if you don’t like the radio program, you can change the station; if you don’t like the atmosphere, you can find another restaurant. But if you don’t want your computer screen or your cell phone looking back at you, the only cure is to turn it off. The only choice is no choice.

That is the real difference between intrusive, which we can debate, and invasive, which we can’t. If I have to stop using a service to control it, it isn’t much of a service, is it?