Media Headliner: The man who's taking on the web privacy cynics

These critics, or more accurately, critics of Phorm, the digital
technology company he now heads in the UK, fear that its ability to use
customer information in order to target them with relevant advertising
will create an internet Big Brother, casting a prying eye on hapless
folk going about their everyday web business.

Privacy campaigners fretting over the group's technology are woefully
misinformed, Drayton says: "There's a counter-intuitive element which I
think makes it quite hard for people to understand, even experts. The
counter-intuition is that we do not store any personal data. We do not
know where you have been."

Phorm's behavioural advertising targeting platform, the Open Internet
Exchange, which launched last month, analyses users' web browsing. The
browsing pattern triggers advertising "channels" in the system which
match key words typed into the browser, or websites visited, with
relevant ads.

But, according to Drayton, none of the browsing history is stored. Last
week, the information commissioner ruled that Phorm must get an opt-in
agreement from users before targeting them. Apropos privacy, Drayton
says: "We can never identify an individual and there are myriad
safeguards in the system to ensure you never can and never will."

Paradoxically, Drayton asserts that Phorm is in fact the way forward for
consumer privacy, as its system protects consumers against phishing or
fraudulent websites.

Launched as 121Media in 2002, Phorm's business model, put simply,
involves hatching deals with major internet service providers and other
online publishers (it has agreements in place BT, Virgin Media and Talk
Talk). Phorm is listed on the Alternative Investment Market and splits
the revenues made from serving targeted ads on the Open Internet
Exchange platform with the ISPs.

Drayton arrived at Phorm as its UK chief executive in October 2006 (it
was still known as 121Media back then). This followed a year-long stint
as the European managing director at the AOL-owned Advertising.com,
which came to an end when AOL integrated the business more fully into
the centre.

He says he was attracted to Phorm by the vision of its founder, the
chief executive Kent Ertugrul, and the combination of its access to the
ISPs and its own investment in technology and tools. He says: "There
were already some very smart people involved and my job was to build a
team - which I suppose is what I feel I do best within a business and
marketing environment: build effective teams with the right mix of
talent and endeavour and experience."

Drayton moved into the world of new media after ten years at the
Telegraph Group, where he rose to become managing director before losing
his job in the wake of the takeover of the company by the Barclay
brothers in 2004. Drayton had built significant online experience,
though, during a spell as the managing director of Hollinger Telegraph
New Media, the newspaper company's new-media arm.

But does he miss the newspaper days? "I think there's something unique
and exciting about the buzz of a newspaper environment," he says.
"Certainly I look back on that with great, great memories. However,
alongside being a newspaper person, I had been a very committed digital
person and I had been the advocate and evangelist within the Telegraph
Group to move those things forward. So while I have a huge and remaining
affection for newspapers, it was also clear to me that the next wave of
media was going to happen more importantly in the digital space - and so
it is proving to be."

And Drayton argues that some of the essential appeal of newspapers can
be applied to the Phorm model: "It's not intrusive advertising. It's
tailored and it's relevant. It's akin to a specialist magazine or a
newspaper supplement which has its classified and display advertising
for which the readers are sometimes almost as interested in as they are
in the pure editorial."

Phorm's great strength for advertisers, Drayton argues, is that it has
the potential to combine reach with effective targeting. "To date,
you've always had to trade one for the other," he says. But is there a
danger in all this, that Phorm will get swept away amid privacy concerns
and awkward publicity about its offering? For instance, damaging reports
circulated at the end of March that The Guardian had opted not to use
the platform owing to privacy fears, wiping 5 per cent off Phorm's share
price.

Drayton concludes that the onus is on Phorm to engage the industry but
says there is no frustration at present around having to explain its
position. "We'd like to have a much more open and much more dynamic
debate about what this means for the future of the marketing industry,"
he says.

"We think there's an incredibly interesting conversation to be had. We
need everyone to be comfortable with the premise of what we're doing,
and that includes the privacy issue. We're absolutely clear what we're
doing is a significant benefit to the consumer and the industry and that
it's a significant step forward in terms of consumer privacy, but we do
need to make sure that everybody's understood that. It'll take as long
as it takes us to inform, educate and, hopefully, enlighten."

THE LOWDOWN

Age: 48

Lives: Camden, London

Family: Wife, Blanca (Spanish); three children, Molly, 11, Charlie, ten

and Lucas, seven

Most treasured possession: BMW motorbike

Last books you read: The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, by Stephen

Robinson; Pies and Prejudice, by Stuart Maconie

Favourite piece of technology: The BlackBerry, of course

Motto: Make the most of now