Although cliche, life is not always what it seems. So is behavioral targeting. It is not 100 percent solid for both the advertiser or the user.
From the advertisers perspective tracking is not completely accurate. The main reason being that a cookie might register on a shared family computer. The computer could have multiple users: 50-year old husband, 42-year old wife, 17-year old daughter, and a 10-year old boy. If the son of the household is the one whom mostly spends time online computer gaming, that specific browser will register as a young segment. All the ad impressions will not attract any clicks from any of the other family members for they will not be relevant. The data is not personally identifiable.
The user is the one whom pays the highest price for behavioral targeting. The trade off is relevant ads for personal privacy. For behavioral ads can track your browsing patterns, Facebook likes and even your most recent tweets. The collection of all this data registers users into a correspondent segment.
Currently there is no legislation protecting users right to privacy. The only options users have is the option to opt out from tracking. So basically it is the online advertising duty to inform and educate prospect customers on their options.
Other Resources:
Ad Industry Attempts to Self-Regulate Behavioral Advertising
http://www.fastcompany.com/1692936/ad-industry-self-regulates-behavioral-advertising
Behavioral targeting: the user-scale advertising
http://www.youngdigitallab.net/social-media/behavioral-advertising-the-user-scale-advertising/
I agree 100% with your post. Everything related to Behavioral Marketing is still a work in process because it is not 100% accurate, and it is very limiting due to legal and security reasons. It has evolved a lot in the past years and it is getting pretty intense lately with the social media boom which has helped this new way of marketing a lot. I also agree with the fact that it is the marketers duty to inform and educate their prospect customers that in order to protect the customer's privacy and to safeguard themselves of any future legal actions.
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