• by Bill McCloskey , September 4, 2001

It might be a short column this week. I'm writing this on Labor Day. I've been at a block party all day, playing guitar and singing in a block party type pickup band: You know, bad versions of Mustang Sally and I Saw Her Standing There. And now I'm supposed to write something intelligent about online advertising.

But is there anything intelligent to write about online advertising? I mean, in the last few weeks things have been getting crazier and crazier. It was bad enough to learn that Windows XP won't have Java support. No major worries: it will take a while for people to upgrade their operating system. But now Microsoft has announced that there will be no Java support in Internet Explore 6.0.

This is a much more serious thing: new computers may still have old operating systems for a while, but new browsers will be preloaded and start proliferating as soon as IE 6 hits the streets. This gives Java-based advertising solutions much less time to react. It's like being on Death Row and suddenly waking up and discovering you're in Texas.

And then, in one of the dumbest moves by a company in recent memory outside of Adobe having that Russian programmer arrested, Gator sues the IAB! Gator, a piece of client-side software that ostensibly fills out forms for you but in reality is one of the most efficient vacuums of personal information I've seen (which it then uses to paint over other websites’ ads with its own highly targeted ads), has filed a lawsuit against the Interactive Advertising Bureau claiming that it's (Gators) software may be illegal constitutes slander and libel. To which I say, Horse Hockey!

Now, the reason this is a dumb idea is not because it's dumb to sue the IAB. In fact, there might be all sorts of upside for Gator: free publicity, new business, exciting new Machiavellian debates on the merits of wiping out the revenue source of the last remaining websites still left standing, so that F***edCompany.com can entertain us for a few more months. Tons of upside.

The reason that it is a dumb idea is because publicity is the last thing that a software product like Gator needs. Not because of the business model: you can argue the business model ‘till you're blue in the face. And I can't wait to see the trial (if it ever gets that far, which I doubt, because there are some interesting legal questions to answer here). No, the reason they don't want publicity is because of the privacy issues! Don't get me wrong: Gator is not doing anything illegal by gathering the information that it does: as I pointed out in a past column, they are very upfront about all the info they gather from their users in their privacy policy. In a nutshell, their privacy policy is basically: you have no privacy.

But of course nobody reads the privacy policy. Unless, because of the lawsuit and the attention it receives, Katie Couric starts doing a Today Show report on the fact that here is this cute little software package that just happens to track every website you go to, how long you are there, where you enter, where you leave, knows every offer you've taken advantage of, and, oh by the way, knows your name, email, zip code, and country. And with just a few clicks, it will also store your address, phone number, credit card info, etc, etc. And since it serves targeted ads, I wonder what kind of ads little Jimmy is going to start seeing on his Cartoon Network site once Dad's been surfing the Net all night? Hmmm.

No, I think that would be "game over" for Gator. Certain things are just better left in dark corners and not dragged out into the light. Look what happened to Third Voice. Or Richard Nixon.

So, I'm sorry to all my readers. This week there just wasn't anything intelligent to say about online advertising for, this week at least, the truth is dumber than fiction.

-- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies.