Turns out the FCC wants behavioral advertisers to police themselves or else the FTC will do it for them - and I don't think any advertiser really wants that - according to FTC to Web Advertisers: Police Yourselves, or We’ll Do it For You in TechCrunch today.
According to an article on Reuters published on November 2nd about FTC says Internet ad self-regulation falling short
..."People should have dominion over their computers," he said. "We really mean it."
He left open the possibility of a "do not track" list, similar to the FTC's "do not call" registry which requires telemarketers to refrain from phoning anyone on the list. Such a "do not track" list was proposed this week by several consumer and privacy groups.
"I am concerned ... when my personal information is sold to third parties and when my online (research) is tracked across several Web sites," said Leibowitz, one of two Democrats on the five-member commission.
But several other speakers at the FTC conference cautioned against any government regulation.
Randall Rothenberg, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, warned against inadvertently stifling one of the most dynamic sectors of the U.S. economy."
I think the last thing anyone wants to have government policing behavioral advertising though there's a need for some kind of standards to be put in place - probably because the government will have problems keeping up with the technology to make the right decisions.
On one hand, better targeting of ads and content to what we're interested in based on our behavior is what we want - what everyone should really want - and yet, it's also an issue of privacy and of opting out that has not really been dealt with. Ideally, you want to send the message the industry will come up with a good solution and police themselves - but in practice, that's often hard to do.
On the other hand, when the government gets involved, the results might be draconian - and no one really wants that - so hopefully, well get a Do Not Track list easily that is provided by Behavioral Targeting firms.
But we'll see what happens in the next year or two.
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Tracked on: November 5, 2007 1:58 AM | Permalink to Trackback