• Ad Age, Friday, December 9, 2005 12:15 PM

Marketers who use uninvited adware popups on computers, beware: a Federal Trade Commissioner is keeping an eye on you. Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, a Democrat, wants marketers using pop-ups to voluntarily clean up their act. If they don't, he says he will mount an effort to publicly identify and embarrass them in future FTC cases. "A lot of consumers have stuff in their computers that's generating pop-up ads that is hard to uninstall that they didn't consent to and some [of the ads] are for major advertisers," said Leibowitz. He has been talking up some self-control in various meetings of marketer associations, warning that the adware programs threaten their livelihood. "You are going to kill the goose if you lose face with Internet consumers," he said. "The FTC could consider that when it brings adware cases, listing all the advertisers whose content was delivered without notice of consent." He added that marketers need to follow their instinct and "do the right thing" and not follow their competitors into the "dark-gray areas" of marketing.

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