Let me get this straight … Google is going to offer a free e-mail service with, like, twenty times the online storage space offered by Hotmail and other free services as well as some other, unspecified features? And for that, they want to be able to insert ads they deem “appropriate” for me based on their review of the content of my mail.

People are all in a twist over this because of an “implied” right to privacy in e-mail. Without going into the technological argument as to why this concept is wrong, wrong, wrong – let’s just say that if you’re sending e-mail through a public webmail server and that e-mail bounces around the planet a couple of times before it finds its way to your desktop, you’re a freakin’ idiot if you think anything about that message is private.

You’ll just have to trust me on this. Then again, if you’d trust your most private thoughts to a very public e-mail, why wouldn’t you trust me?

But let’s look at the marketing issues involved here. Privacy groups are up in arms because Google is actually telling us they’ll scan our e-mail to make sure the ad messages we get are more likely to be about things in which we have an interest. I suppose the alternative is what folks like Hotmail and others do which is include ads and hotlinks ad nauseum promoting their own service, discounted diplomas or all other types of advertisers who can barely afford the cost of SPAM.

Look, once you get over this whole “Google will read my mail” thing, what they’ve proposed here is a way to serve relevant ads to customers and that is, in my opinion, a critical next step if online marketing is ever going to reach the next step. Ad content has to be relevant in order for it to matter. And online ad content, by the very nature of the medium itself, has to deal with this challenge in highly quantifiable terms every minute of every day.

But the challenge isn’t stopping at online ads, folks. For those of us in the marketing business, we should be spending extra time trying to discern what the latest Yankalovich study is telling us about how consumers are starting to get fed up with traditional advertising messages. One-way, us-to-you messages are not working like they used to.

The consumer is finding his voice. Don’t be surprised if he tells you to “get lost.”

And for companies to succeed in the world starting today, they have to find a way to listen. If you’re pissed at the Gmail proposal, I think the best you can make the argument that Google is trying to listen to conversations before rudely interrupting. To me, it’s kind of like an online version of the nerdy kid in the room straining to listen to a conversation in order to find out how he can get in on the conversation.

I suppose as long as the kid has something relevant to say when he finally speaks, that’s okay. But that’s not usually the case. They usually come in with a Battlestar Gallactica take or the latest dish on D&D and promptly get deleted from the conversation.

If the nerds at Google don’t know how to listen discretely, interject in a relevant way and keep the conversation going once they’ve butted in, consumers will vote with their feet and leave the party.

It’s a lesson marketers are learning the hard way in every medium. Online, once again, is just a step or two ahead of the rest.

Later.

Will Gmail Read Your Mail?

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