FTC Tries to Give Its Answer to
Consumer Privacy and Behavioral
Tracking
By David Gervase
On Nov. 1-2, 2007, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hosted a two-day “Town
Hall” event in Washington, D.C., that focused on online consumer protection issues
related to targeted and behavioral advertising. This is the
practice of online marketing companies collecting information about individuals who visit their Web sites.
The data in question includes pages visited on the
Web site, referring site, geographic location based upon
the IP address, and possibly other non-unique information about the computer, such as screen resolution,
browser, connection speed,
“If the “Do-Not- etc. Marketers then use this
data to create a profile of
Track” list is approved, that customer and display
advertisements that are
it unfortunately seems extremely relevant to the
that the impact would consumer. While this data does not include personal
be negative — from a information such as a phone
number or E-mail address,
performance standpoint it does give the advertiser
— for the majority of a significant advantage in determining what ads or
the direct response banners a particular visitor is
most likely to click on.
community. ” The “Do-Not-Track” list, which is very similar in func- tion to the more recognized “Do-Not-Call” list, was sub-
mitted to the FTC for review by a number of independ-
ent privacy groups, including the Consumer Federation
of America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the
Center for Democracy and Technology. It is their con-
tention that the government should create a committee
to regulate what information is being stored by the vari-
ous online advertising firms that rely on this data.
They are also pushing for advertising firms to be le-
gally required to submit a list of
the IP addresses for their servers
and domains used to track visi-
tors with cookies. These agencies
claim that if this policy is put into
place, it would give consumers
more control over who has access
to their personal information.
While the proposal sounds simple in nature, the
actual implementation would be more difficult than its
predecessor. First, consumers who do not want to be
shown relevant ads would be required to opt in to the
program by submitting their names to a list maintained
by the FTC. Next, new browser plug-ins would have to
be developed and installed individually by consumers.
In addition to the customer list, the FTC would also
retain the list of manually submitted sites and servers
that utilize behavioral advertising technology. The consumer’s browser would interact with this list of domains
and block tracking cookies, yet would still allow non-tar-geted ads to be shown.
It has not yet been determined if consumers are actually concerned about advertisers tracking their surfing
habits in order to display more relevant content. Since
the majority of the tracking is anonymous with no individual name or physical address known, and consumers
do not receive additional E-mails or solicitations from
this data, it is unlikely that most people would care either way.
Personally, I would rather see content that is tailored
to what I am interested in. When I visit my local Italian restaurant, the owner recognizes me and therefore
recommends dishes he knows I will like. This type of
personal service increases the pleasure of the eating experience and the same concept applies to the Web. Why
show me ads for baby diapers if I have never searched
for anything child related? By making ads and content
applicable to the user, it will make the internet a more
enjoyable and useful experience.
If the “Do-Not-Track” list is approved, it unfortunately seems that the impact would be negative — from
a performance standpoint — for the majority of the
direct response community. While most single-product
Web sites generally do not serve targeted banner advertisements or show unique content to the viewer, many
traffic-monitoring programs use this technology to track
the number of visitors that view a site. With the implementation of multi-variant and “a/b” testing platforms
that utilize the collected behavioral and targeted data,
the future of direct response marketing could definitely
be stifled by this proposal. ■
