Credit scores have long had major impacts on people’s lives; they’ve affected consumers’ options in terms of buying cars and houses, and sometimes, even in terms of securing jobs. And in the future, if Google has anything to say about it, they may influence what ads individuals see, too.
With the assistance of Compete and around two million consumers who opted into the project, Google’s apparently been interfacing lists of FICO scores with the Google Content Network. This has led to some impressive targeting opportunities.
Masha Korsunsky, Google’s senior industry marketing manager of financial services, explained to Laurie Sullivan, “Let’s say we have an advertiser who wants to reach consumers with a high FICO score who applied for mortgages in the first quarter. We can provide the advertiser with a list of Web sites on our Google content network that index against this segment.”
Google can contact a lot of other segments that advertisers like, too. Sullivan reports, “Korsunsky says Google’s Content Network can reach 70% of credit card applicants with a high FICO score, 87% of mortgage applicants with a high FICO score, and 90% of the people who visit small business sites who have a high FICO score.”
It’s hard to imagine tons of people opting to show Google their credit scores, however, so this may represent more of an interesting experiment than the start of something big.
UPDATE: A Google representative was nice enough to email Murdok a clarification. She writes, “Google did not see, and will not see, consumer credit scores. The distinction is incredibly important, as consumer privacy is incredibly important to us. There are no plans for Google to use FICO related targeting for any of its products or offerings, and we don’t collect or serve ads based on personal information without user permission.”
