British Telecom’s marketing of its Webwise behavioral- targeting ...

service first as protecting them against phishing and then as providing more relevant ads. “We are in no way attempting to pull the wool over their eyes with this,” the spokesman said. The Webwise site, which comes up in the browsers of customers chosen for the trial offer, includes much background information on the system, he said. “You have to appreciate that not everybody wants to read in incredible detail” how targeting works. Most people don’t worry about Google storing their search queries for months, so BT doesn’t think customers will feel the provider is trying to snooker them into signing up for a monitoring service offering more relevant ads, he said. A “handful of ultra-vocal protestors” in the U.K. have objected to BT’s deal with targeting provider Phorm, and for reasons unrelated to marketing methods, the spokesman said. BT has no reason to explain to customers that the aim of targeting is revenue, any more than the company should have to tell customers that it offers broadband service to make money, the spokesman said. The U.K. broadband market differs markedly from its U.S. counterpart, with “hundreds” of ISPs competing for customers and also running on very tight profit margins, so it shouldn’t surprise Britons that providers would look for new revenue streams, he said. BT will continue testing the system for at least four weeks, then pause to study its technical performance and customer reaction, before asking all customers to sign up, he said. The trial’s “primary purpose is not a customer referendum.”