Hoping to be tapped to monitor
Web companies' compliance with behavioral targeting guidelines, the start-up Better Advertising has just purchased Ghostery, which offers a Firefox plug-in that tells users when they are being tracked
online.
The deal closed at the beginning of the year. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Ghostery has been installed by two million users since it launched last year. More than 300,000 of
that group have opted to allow Ghostery access to their browsers, says Better Advertising CEO and founder Scott Meyer.
He says the company will use that panel data to determine whether Web
companies are honoring users' decisions to opt out of behavioral targeting -- or receiving ads based on sites they have previously visited.
"We will never use this data for any form of
advertising targeting," says Meyer, formerly CEO of About.com. "None of this personal data is being used for any reason other than to help consumers manage their privacy."
Better Advertising
submitted a bid to the National Advertising Review Council last week in response to a request for proposals for a platform to monitor compliance with the self-regulatory privacy principles announced
last year by an industry coalition.
That group, formed to stem new government regulation of online advertising, is made up of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of
National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Last July, it issued privacy principles that say companies that use behavioral advertising should notify consumers about
targeting and obtain their consent -- which in most situations requires companies to allow users to opt out of targeting.
News of Ghostery's acquisition was first reported by Paid Content.
Better Advertising, which launched last year, has grown to 16
employees, says Meyer. Ghostery's founder, David Cancel, will serve as an advisor to Better Advertising.
Meyer adds that the company plans to soon roll out a version of Ghostery for Internet
Explorer and Chrome.