The good folks at Media Post bring us an interview with Gidi Gilboa, advertising solutions marketing manager for NDS, a UK-based company that is all about the set-top box, that begs this question:  If advertisers are so keen to get to know their customers, why don’t they talk to them?

Mr. Gilboa touts his company’s new service, a “suite of advertising solutions for set-top boxes that will enable addressable, measurable and interactive advertising.”  Essentially, you watch television, the set-top box watches you and advertisers build a fatter dossier.  The problem is, a more scientific guess is still a guess.

There is one point we have made quite a lot on this blog:  Companies who want to build relationships with customers continue to advocate technology as a guide to relevant advertising when all they really have to do is ask.  Right now the web is like a junior high school dance where the advertisers are on one side of the room and consumers are bunched on the other.  You can’t dance until you ask!

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, high-paying jobs site, 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 being promoted and the ads for Raw Natural Beauty products, Wyndham Hotels and “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 just what those interests were, the direct 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.

Microsoft has just released a beta version of its internet browser, IE8.  Key among the features are those devoted to privacy.  This is from the company’s overview:

The Most Secure Version of Internet Explorer to Date

Today’s online threat attack vectors have evolved dramatically, but people still need to trust they can browse securely. Internet Explorer 8 enhances customers’ online confidence by providing an increased ability to control and protect their data. Internet Explorer 8 is delivering an end-to-end approach to security and privacy that is focused on social engineering, new defenses against Web server attacks and additional improvements to defend browser-based exploits. Several security and privacy investments found in Internet Explorer 8 include these:

The features are generally being lauded but one of the unintended consequences of the new browser may be a diminished digital experience.

Ultimately, IE8 may be seen a merely a another routine (and ineffective?) response to the persistently evolving threat to online consumer privacy. The conventional wisdom seems to be: the greater the danger, the more powerful the response.

But, unlike the success the logical insanity labeled “Mutally Assured Destruction” had in getting us through the Cold War, the higher this wall, the deeper this moat, the more secure this perimeter, the less value we create online.

If a user wants content of his choosing but his browser says no, well, more likely than not, the security settings get changed. That’s why privacy is not found on the inside of a locked door, it is the result of a negotiation.

Better to pay people for who we are. Why not create a privacy commodities market and let advertisers and marketers bid on what they value? Better to respect our interests. Why not create a way for consumers to select the advertising they want to see? Why not ask?

More and more sophisticated technology cannot ultimately answer the question: “What do you want?”

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.