On Thursday, the Digital Advertising Alliance (“DAA”) announced that it will enforce its previously issued “Application of Self-Regulatory Principles to the Mobile Environment” (the “Mobile Guidance”) beginning September 1, 2015. Although the Mobile Guidance was initially issued in July 2013, enforcement was delayed pending the DAA’s implementation of an effective choice mechanism for the mobile … Continue Reading
With paywalls and premium subscriptions finding only modest success, paid advertisements remain the primary means of generating revenue from online content. Native advertising has emerged as a leader in the competition for ad impressions and brand engagement. Expected to grow from $7.9 billion in spending this year to $21 billion by 2018, native advertising is … Continue Reading
On October 28, the Online Interest-Based Advertising Accountability Program (Accountability Program), released five decisions in which the website operators have agreed to update their respective websites to provide enhanced notice as required under the Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA Principles). The Accountability Program enforces the OBA Principles on behalf of the Digital Advertising … Continue Reading
The Better Business Bureau (“BBB”) and the Direct Marketing Association (“DMA”) are in charge of enforcing the ad industry’s Self Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising (“OBA Principles”), which regulate the online behavioral advertising activities of both advertisers and publishers (that is, web sites on which behaviorally-targeted ads are displayed or from which user data … Continue Reading
We’re all familiar with the ads that pop up on the side of our browsers, personalized to highlight things we might be interested in based on our web browsing activity. Marketers and advertisers regularly track consumers’ online activities, interests and preferences and use the information they collect to create targeted ads, meant to appeal to … Continue Reading
The French, Italian, British, German, Spanish and Dutch Data Protection Authorities announced on April 2, 2013 that each will launch investigations and enforcement actions against Google on the grounds that its privacy policy is not compliant with the European Directive on Data Protection, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm, (the “Directive”).… Continue Reading
It has been said that we must learn from the past to profit by the present. Taking this literally in this digital age of ours, one online advertising company has found this maxim to have some serious privacy implications as evidenced by the FTC order last week banning undisclosed history sniffing practices.… Continue Reading
The Federal Trade Commission has announced a settlement agreement with ScanScout, Inc., an online advertising network alleged to have made misleading statements in its privacy policy which omitted to disclose ScanScout’s use of Flash cookies. The settlement terms require ScanScout to implement various conspicuous (i.e., not hidden in the privacy policy) notices regarding behavioral tracking and … Continue Reading
Updating previous reports, a consortium of internet advertising trade groups recently launched a self-regulatory program which adopts a universal icon to inform consumers when advertisements are targeted as a result of data tracking:… Continue Reading
Four recent lawsuits filed against some of the Web’s biggest media companies challenge the alleged use of Flash cookies capable of circumventing a user’s ability to prevent the tracking of online behavior.… Continue Reading
A new advertising icon was released last week by a privacy advocacy group in conjunction with a group of advertisers and agencies as part of an effort to educate consumers about behavioral advertising and head off federal regulation.
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When Flash cookies (also known as a “Local Shared Objects”) were first flagged as a privacy issue back in 2005, a few savvy companies added a disclosure about Flash cookies into their web site privacy policies. Since then, we have not heard the issue raised again. Now this sleeper issue seems to have been awakened by … Continue Reading
Over the course of the last decade, many companies have become accustomed to notifying consumers of their data collection practices in their online privacy policy. However, in a recent proposed settlement, the FTC indicated that, at least under the facts before them, disclosures that were “buried” in a privacy policy were not sufficient. On June … Continue Reading
On February 12, 2009, the FTC issued its long-anticipated Staff Report on Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising. The revised Self-Regulatory Principles are the result of a year of study of the more than 60 comments provided by industry, advocacy organizations, academics, and individual consumers in response to the FTC's proposed self-regulatory principles issued in late 2007.
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In a year when behavioral advertising was already expected to be at the top of the hot button privacy issues list, on January 13, 2008, the Center for Digital Democracy (“CDT”) and U.S. Public Interest Research Group (“US PIRG”) filed a document with the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) urging the FTC to investigate online mobile … Continue Reading
Behavioral tracking of consumers online in order to deliver relevant advertising is a privacy issue that is receiving a lot of attention, and one that has been the focus of Federal Trade Commission and consumer group scrutiny. On September 25th, the United States Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on online privacy and received commitments from the three industry representatives (from AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner Cable) that if they do deploy technologies that are able to track consumer online behavior in order to tailor advertising, that consumers will have clear notice and a full opportunity to provide affirmative consent. None of the companies currently use such technologies in their roles as Internet Service Providers. The broadband providers challenged the rest of the online industry, including web site operators and application providers such as Google, to provide the same protections to consumers. Essentially, the witnesses called for an end to "opt out" when it comes to online advertising.
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