Most of the news out of NCTA's The Cable Show in Los Angeles this week has focused on topics like broadband regulation, TV Everywhere, the Comcast/NBC Universal merger and the future of Hulu.
However, the biggest story for those in digital marketing -- though only reported by
Multichannel News as of this morning -- happened when Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz
told operators and networks attending the cable industry's most important annual event that the FTC was not interested in regulating behavioral targeting as long as the industry is making progress
toward self-regulation.
In fact, Leibowitz went so far as to opine that behaviorally targeted online ads can deliver a valuable service to consumers if they mean fewer, more relevant ads for
Web browsers. Apparently, he's also getting tired of all of the irrelevant ad clutter that clog up most Web sites these days!
Leibowitz' announcement is big news for everyone in the
advertising, marketing and media industries. For the past two years, the FTC and Leibowitz have sounded the drumbeats that the marketing industry should either regulate itself when it comes to
protecting online privacy, or the government will step in with its own regulations. Those drumbeats were significantly amplified recently when Congressman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Cliff Stearns
(R-Fla.) released proposed federal legislation that would impose a new regulatory privacy protection framework across the collection and usage of marketing data, both online and offline. While many
have hailed this proposed bill as balanced, a number of its key terms are defined very broadly, leading to concerns that if the bill becomes law, it could have dramatic, unintended and imperiling
impacts on a multitude of forms of online and offline ad delivery.
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That the FTC is now telling the world that it is prepared to give the industry its chance at self-regulation -- while
there's proposed legislation in the hopper and ready to go -- is welcome news to all of the media companies, marketers and agencies who have been working so hard through the Interactive Advertising
Bureau, the 4As, ANA and DMA. Those organizations and a number of others, to both improve consumers' confidence that their private information is safe online and forestall the need for government
regulation, have created a self-regulatory program to protect online privacy that will be administered by the Better Business Bureau,.
However, it's clear from Leibowitz's remarks that the
industry has no free pass here. In fact, most would say that the industry is under more pressure now to gets its act together on privacy. Leibowitz was adamant that industry members have to improve
the notice they give to consumers about what data they are collecting and what they are going to do with it. And those notices must be in common, plain language. As he remarked, data collection
practices for many sites and network marketers is virtually "incomprehensible" to most consumers.
I have to agree with Leibowitz here. For example, who reading this blog can tell the rest of
us in common, plain language about all of the data Facebook collects, and what it does -- and doesn't do -- with that data? I can't.
This is the time when our industry has to become truly
user-friendly on data and privacy. Even when the industry works very hard to protect consumer privacy, it tends to do a terrible job communicating what it does clearly and simply. That won't last.
The FTC is giving the industry its chance. The IAB and others have given us a framework to police ourselves. Now is the time to put up or be regulated. Leibowitz is certainly aware that if the
industry doesn't take the carrot he just offered yesterday, Boucher and Stearns are right beside him ready to swing a really big stick.
What do you think? Are we ready to take up and deliver
on the chance that Jon Leibowitz has offered us? Let us know in the comments section below.