Commentary

Privacy Issues Continue To Evolve In BT

When I entered the targeted advertising business 10 years ago, most people had no idea what targeted advertising was. Jumping forward to present day, there are many way to target ads and gather data. Data-based targeted ads, behavioral targeting (BT) in particular, are recognized as a leading monetization tool for display advertising.

Different companies entering the BT space look to bring more data, better data and enhanced data utilization in targeting ads. One thing has not changed -- the issue of privacy. Ensuring a user's privacy was then and is now at the forefront of all solutions developed in the targeted advertising and BT space.

As the market evolved, so did awareness of privacy issues grew. We've seen many articles outlining BT privacy issues and best practices. Recent articles have debated whether a link to a privacy policy should be on the home page of a company's Web site or somewhere else. Others have covered planned protests outside of the annual meeting of a large U.K. telecom company, which plans to provide its ISP data for BT.

As time, resources and attention was devoted to privacy issues, practices were developed and deployed to alert consumers to targeted ads pending the data used in targeting ads:

• Usage of non PII data in targeting ads warrants an opt-out option at the data collection point, i.e. a disclosure of the practice at the privacy policy of the data supplying site along with a link to an opt-out landing page.

• Usage of PII data in targeting ads warrants an opt-in.

However, while a consensus was reached over the above, the market's continued evolution lead to additional questions on a regular basis.

Two of the questions that imminently need to be addressed are: If an ISP is the data source, does that warrant a different way of alerting the consumers? And, how prominent does a link to a privacy policy need to be?

My answer to these and future questions is to always take the conservative approach. Do not take the risk of alienating consumers. And, always keep the consumer's best interest in mind. After all, our industry is all about delivering messages that are of service to them.

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