You may not know it, but online services such as Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter are editing the content you see, based on what they believe to be your preferences, according to links you’ve clicked in the past. The upside is that the great, incoherent amalgam of information that is the Internet is now tailored to your expressed wants, needs, tastes and desires. The downside is that this tailoring places you in what Eli Pariser calls a filter bubble: a space where what you see today and tomorrow is determined by what you looked at yesterday. Living in separate filter bubbles, when you and your neighbor search the same term, you may get entirely different results.

Pariser discusses this as a big-picture ethical issue: Are our online services obligated to make us aware of information that challenges our preconceptions? He thinks they are.

Leaving that larger question aside, the presence of filter bubbles poses a whole, new problem for marketers. If the information you’re sending out to your audiences is being filtered by its carriers, you can’t just broadcast a message and expect it to be delivered. Stranded outside your audiences’ filter bubbles, you’ll never get a chance to engage them.

To get inside, your message has to be aligned with its audience. We believe this requires an accurate, detailed audience profile. Knowing what your audiences’ interests are – even in areas unrelated to your offering – you can craft a message that doesn’t just reach them, but engages them. And once you’ve engaged them, you might even get a chance to challenge their preconceptions.