• AdAge, Tuesday, January 9, 2007 12 PM

In a 21st-century version of "The Hidden Persuaders," a federal policy activist is charging that because of information collected on the Internet, Americans are being "brandwashed" by marketers that are using the data to shape media. But the ad industry sees the manipulation charge as being as "silly" as the 1950s brouhaha over subliminal messaging.

Jeff Chester's new book, "Digital Destiny," says marketers are trampling over consumer privacy rights to gather information that can be used to digitally follow users. "It's an ad, ad, ad world," says Chester, executive director of the Center on Digital Democracy.

In October, he asked the FTC to launch a probe of online privacy issues. Chester writes: "We all should be alarmed about how interactive advertising is shaping the kind of programming and content available to us in the future."

Dick O'Brien, executive vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, called the issue overblown. "Its charge that advertising manipulates online data to achieve mind control of a helpless population is the 21st-century version of using subliminal messages to make us want popcorn at the movies."

Read the whole story at AdAge »