• Wall Street Journal, Thursday, April 23, 2009 11 AM

AT&T is expected to advocate more transparency and consumer control in targeted advertising in testimony today before a House subcommittee conducting a hearing on the practice, Emily Steel reports. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), chairman of the subcommittee, says that a statute is needed to regulate how companies collect, share and use data on consumers' behavior in targeting online advertising.

AT&T will say that consumers should have "full and complete" notice of what information is collected about them and how it is used and protected, and should have tools that let them determine whether their Web activities are being tracked. The company says it won't use consumer information for online behavioral advertising unless it first obtains consent from the consumers involved.

Most big Internet companies and industry trade groups back self-regulation, fearing that regulation will stifle the growth of digital advertising. For the most part, they use consumer information in their online behavioral advertising, except for data on consumers who have opted out.

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