The picture painted of behavioral targeting is often a negative one. It’s seen as an invasion of privacy, with the word “tracking” assumed to encompass all aspects of life. Though there are some websites who use the information they collect for evil (i.e. spam and malware), the majority use this data to give users a more personalized Web surfing experience.
Congress is considering enacting a bill to restrict tracking and targeting online. The most severe of bills could require websites to ask permission before sending a targeted ad. This would lead to a number of inconveniences for Web users, for example, frequently visited websites would no longer remember preferences or auto complete information, and frequency capping on ads would no longer exist, so the same user would see the same ad over and over.
The advertising and marketing industries recognize that changes need to be made, but they believe that self-regulation would be better than legislation, and they have already begun proving their case. In fact, a varied group of leading industry associations recently published a 48 page document entitled, “Self Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising.”
For more on this issue, read “Tracking Makes Life Easier for Consumers” on AdAge.com.
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