Profiling Phorm: an autopoietic approach to the audience-as-commodity

Abstract

As online advertising moves to the centre-stage of advertisers’ media spend, now surpassing television and press in the UK, it is argued here that critique of advertising practice should pay more careful attention to systems of feedback-oriented production and data-based audience management and creation. This paper thus progresses and updates Dallas Smythe’s (1977) audience-as-commodity argument by examining developments in online behavioural advertising, particularly in regards to the potential for advertising facilitated by deep-packet inspection (DPI) that has caused consternation to technologically savvy consumers, privacy activists and the European Commission. Utilising the case study of Phorm that received national media attention in the UK and policy-maker attention in Europe, this paper highlights key features of DPI-based advertising, non-personally identifiable profiling and their implications for contemporary commercial autopoietic feedback relationships.