Curbs urged for behavioural ads
Find a Conversation
| Tue, 09-01-2009 - 1:47pm |
A powerful alliance of privacy and consumer groups have likened behavioural advertising to "being followed by an invisible stalker."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8230823.stm
They now want Congress to curtail the practice of tracking consumers online to tailor ads more effectively.
Yahoo, Microsoft and Google all use targeted online advertisements.
"It's not just about the right ad at the right time, it's about creating a profile about you," said the Centre for Digital Democracy's Jeffrey Chester.
"These companies want to know about your likes and dislikes, if you are Hispanic, do you vote, are you on a low income or a high income, where do you travel, what do you like to read.
"It's about a system that not only targets and influences the products you buy but is also a powerful and invisible system of digital persuasion designed to change attitudes and awareness," Mr Chester told BBC News.
The coalition of ten organisations is expected to call on the government to allow consumers to "opt in" rather than "opt out" of such advertising models.
It will also seek to ensure no data is collected around financial or health matters. The key, many say, is transparency.
"An individual's data belongs to them and before these companies track you all over the internet, they need to be transparent about what they are doing and how they intend to use that information," said John Simpson, consumer advocate with the Consumer Watchdog.
Tracking
The call to put limits on such advertising comes as the House Commerce Committee is drafting legislation to improve consumer privacy online.
Congress held hearings on the issue in June. Testimony was provided by Facebook, Google and Yahoo.

While Yahoo and Microsoft have used behavioural advertising for some time, Google waited until March of this year to employ what is also referred to as "interest-based advertising".
In general the system uses a cookie - a small piece of text that lives inside a web browser - to track users as they visit different websites.
This information is then used to target online advertising campaigns at consumers because they tend to result in higher online ad return rates.
That means a user who is a keen traveller and visits lots of travel sites would be shown more travel-related ads.
"Golden egg"
A coalition of America's marketing industry trade bodies, representing about 5,000 companies, published a set of seven principles in July to address concerns around the issue.
Interactive Advertising Bureau
"The vast majority of what happens online is truly anonymous and all marketers and publishers are trying to do is deliver an ad that has some relevancy to the person viewing it at a certain time," Mike Zaneis, vice president of public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau told BBC News.
"The beautiful thing is they don't have to click on that advert, or pay attention to it or do anything."
While Mr Zaneis agreed more has to be done to educate consumers about the issue, he also warned that pushing for a blanket "opt in" measure would be disastrous.
"A broad 'opt in' would be a sea change and it would be a recipe for disaster. It would kill the goose laying the golden egg.
"The goose is the internet and the golden egg is the free content and services that consumers enjoy and that would be diminished," said Mr Zaneis.
Other organisations included in this broad alliance include the Consumers Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy Lives, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, World Privacy Forum, Privacy Times and the Consumer Federation of America.



Pages
One reason I block/allow cookies coming into my comp.
Is it always effective?
To be honest, I wouldn't even know if they were 'targeting' me because I pay absolutely no attention to any of the ads!
Big Brother offers options
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/685.html
Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/media/30adco.html
ABOUT two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.
The professors say they believe the study, scheduled for release on Wednesday, is the first independent, nationally representative telephone survey on behavioral advertising.
The topic may be technical, but it has become a hot political issue. Privacy advocates are telling Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that tracking of online activities by Web sites and advertisers has gone too far, and the lawmakers seem to be listening. Representative Rick Boucher, Democrat of Virginia, wrote in an article for The Hill last week that he planned to introduce privacy legislation. And David Vladeck, head of consumer protection for the F.T.C., has signaled that he will examine data privacy issues closely.
Marketers are arguing that advertising supports free online content. Major advertising trade groups proposed in July some measures that they hoped would fend off regulation, like a clear notice to consumers when they were being tracked.
The data in this area, however, has been largely limited to company-financed research or Internet-based research, which survey experts say they believe is not representative of all Americans. So the study — among the first independent surveys to examine this issue — has attracted widespread interest.
“This research is going to ignite an intense debate on both sides of the Atlantic on what the appropriate policy should be,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the privacy group Center for Digital Democracy, which did not work on the study.
•
The study’s authors hired a survey company to conduct interviews with 1,000 adult Internet users. The interview, which lasted about 20 minutes, included questions like “Please tell me whether or not you want the Web sites you visit to give you discounts that are tailored to your interests.” The results were later adjusted to reflect Census Bureau patterns in categories like sex, age, population density and telephone usage.
Tailored ads in general did not appeal to 66 percent of respondents. Then the respondents were told about different ways companies tailor ads: by following what someone does on the company’s site, on other sites and in offline places like stores.
The respondents’ aversion to tailored ads increased once they learned about targeting methods. In addition to the original 66 percent that said tailored ads were “not O.K.,” an additional 7 percent said such ads were not O.K. when they were tracked on the site. An additional 18 percent said it was not O.K. when they were tracked via other Web sites, and an additional 20 percent said it was not O.K. when they were tracked offline.
The survey company also asked about customized discounts and customized news. Forty-nine percent of respondents said that tailored discounts were O.K., and 42 percent said that customized news was fine.
On the advertising question, there was not a big difference between age groups. Marketers often use teenagers’ behavior on Facebook as anecdotal evidence that they do not mind handing over information. But 55 percent of respondents from 18 to 24 objected to tailored advertising.
“We sometimes think that the younger adults in the United States don’t care about this stuff, and I would suggest that’s an exaggeration,” said Joseph Turow, lead author of the study and a professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His co-authors are professors at Berkeley’s law school and at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
The survey also asked nine true-or-false questions about privacy laws to see how knowledgeable Americans were about protection, including “If a Web site has a privacy policy, it means that the site cannot share information about you with other companies, unless you give the Web site your permission.” (The correct answer is “false.”) On only one question, regarding sweepstakes, was answered correctly by more than half of respondents.
•
Finally, the survey sought opinions on laws regarding tracking, asking if there should be a law that gave people the right to know everything a Web site knew about them. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said yes. Respondents also overwhelmingly supported a hypothetical law that required Web sites and advertising companies to delete all information about an individual upon request; 92 percent endorsed it.
“I don’t think that behavioral targeting is something that we should eliminate, but I do think that we’re at a cusp of a new era, and the kinds of information that companies share and have today is nothing like we’ll see 10 years from now,” Professor Turow said. He said he would like “a regime in which people feel they have control over the data that marketers collect about them. The most important thing is to bring the public into the picture, which is not going on right now.”
Stuart P. Ingis, a partner at the law firm Venable who represents the industry trade groups’ self-regulation coalition, said that the industry was taking steps to explain to consumers how behavioral targeting worked.
“The more people understand the practices and how the data is actually being used, that’s when the concerns disappear,” he said. Just because many Americans are not in favor of something does not mean it should be banned, he said, citing negative feelings about taxes.
But Mr. Chester, whose group is part of a privacy coalition calling for Congressional action, said the survey would be helpful. “This research gives the F.T.C. and Congress a political green light to go ahead and enact effective, but reasonable, rules and policies,” he said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 3, 2009
The Advertising column on Wednesday, about a survey of Americans’ opinions about online tracking by advertisers, misstated the percentage of respondents who favored getting discount offers and news based on their perceived preferences. As an accompanying chart correctly showed, 49 percent — not 51 percent — favored the targeted discounts, and 42 percent — not 58 percent — favored the targeted news. The chart gave an incorrect figure for the percentage who said they were opposed to being shown ads tailored to their perceived interests. As the column correctly reported, 66 percent — not 67 — preferred not to be shown such ads.
Well, I take surveys online so I probably shot myself in the foot by doing that. But I don't buy online from any site I can't go to in person if I choose to. Would never ever buy insurance or stocks or medicines or anything like that online. My taste in movies is my own and won't buy a movie because of an ad. I have to rent it first and if I really really really love it, I will go to the mall or Wallyworld and buy it there.
Gotta wonder what I did when I joined the survey sites though. Guess I should pull my memberships.
Everyone hates advertising, but I know it's a necessary evil in order to keep websites up and operating without charging viewers.
It's not the ads necessarily I'm against, they can be blocked.
A scan on my system yesterday showed I had 58 cookies. I run this scan at least once a week & maybe 3-4 of those cookies are legit sign-ups. The rest are tracking my movements which I wouldn't consider very useful or revealing.
Pages