The think tank Future of Privacy Forum announced this week that it tapped ad agency WPP to come up with new ways of notifying Web users about online behavioral advertising.
Director Jules
Polonetsky hopes that advertising creatives will be able to come up with something more intelligible than the lengthy jargon-filled policies that are all too often incomprehensible. Federal Trade
Commission Chair Jon Leibowitz, who has urged Web companies to provide clear and succinct notice about ad targeting, is cheering the project. "I'm very heartened with what the Future of Privacy Forum
has announced," he tells MediaPost. "Most current online privacy policies are essentially incomprehensible for even the savviest online users."
Today, companies and industry groups use still
pepper their privacy policies with terms like "preference-based marketing," "personally identifiable information," "third-party cookies," etc.
It's clear that many Web users have no idea what
these terms mean. What's more, even within the industry there's significant debate about, say, what should be considered "personally identifiable information."
Besides, the last thing people
want to do when surfing the Web is read a 5,000-word document about privacy. At the same time, it's critical to inform consumers about online data collection. Before people can meaningfully consent to
behavioral targeting, they need to first know what it is.