On Friday, the Digital Advertising Alliance, a group of digital advertising trade organizations, will unveil its first ad campaign ever explaining what the icon is and how it helps users control ads they see online. The campaign, one of the largest domestic consumer privacy campaigns to date, comes as advertisers, technology companies and privacy advocates await a final report from the Federal Trade Commission on online privacy.
“We’re on record as publicly committing to the Federal Trade Commission, to members of Congress and to consumers that education is a key component to a lot of the uses of data” online, said Stu Ingis, general counsel for the alliance.
In addition to the commission’s final report, the White House is expected to prepare its own report on digital privacy. Last year, legislators introduced a number of bills in Congress that called for tighter regulation of mobile and digital privacy, as well as more control over children’s online privacy.
The alliance supports self-regulation of the digital advertising industry. The AdChoices icon-based system, which was introduced in October 2010, allows users who click on the turquoise triangle to opt out of having their behavior tracked online.
The alliance’s Web site receives about 100,000 visits a week, with 90 percent of that traffic coming from users clicking the icon. An average of 15 to 25 percent of the users who visit the site opt out of behavioral advertising each week.
MRM Salt Lake City, part of the McCann World Group, worked free of charge for the alliance to create the campaign, which features digital banner ads, videos and a campaign Web site. One of the videos introduces viewers to the phrase “interest-based advertising,” describing the concept as “Ads intended for you. Based on what you do online.” The video also notes the “promos, offers, coupons, brands and products” that are capable of finding users online.
What it fails to mention, however, is that users can opt out of being the target of personalized ads. A second video tackles that challenge by introducing the AdChoices icon as a stick figure and “an up and coming little star popping up everywhere on the Internet.”
That video goes on to explain that by clicking on the icon users can control and learn more about the information advertisers collect about them. Far from encouraging users to opt out, the ads emphasize how information that advertisers gather actually can improve the quality of the ads users see online.
“Wouldn’t you rather see ads, offers and discounts for that brand?” the narrator asks. “We thought so.”
Digital banner ads feature the headline “Will the right ads find you?” with one version showing a person dressed as a bookstore ad sitting next to a person reading a book.
In 2009, the Interactive Advertising Bureau introduced a similar ad campaign called Privacy Matters that had a decidedly different tone. “Advertising is Creepy” said one ad, which used words like “personally identifiable” information and “data privacy.” The alliance’s campaign takes a new approach. “We wanted this to be positive messaging,” Mr. Ingis said. “It demystifies that there’s nothing bad going on there.”
Lori Feld, the general manager of MRM, said the campaign was meant to emphasize “the positive side” of digital advertising.
“When you’re online it can be a fairly random environment,” Ms. Feld said, referring to users who get ads for dating sites when they are married or mortgage ads when they don’t own a home. “In that scenario we know that everybody loses.”
While the alliance is undertaking the campaign in an attempt to educate consumers, some critics say the banner ads and videos are meant more to fend off possible legislation.
“I don’t think these ad campaigns help Internet users protect their privacy online,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “I think they’re made to justify certain business practices.”
Mr. Ingis said he expected that the consumer education would “provide further support for the fact that the self-regulatory framework is making great progress.” And advertisers have been duly warned about the consequences of bad privacy practices.
Nancy Hill, chief executive of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, urged advertisers attending the association’s annual conference last March to participate in the discussion about privacy “because without self-regulation, our creativity will be increasingly threatened.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Hill said that most consumers “really do understand the quid pro quo” of giving up some behavioral data in exchange for ads that are relevant to their interests.
Digital ad companies are not alone in feeling pressure to explain their data collection practices. In December, Facebook began a campaign to educate its 800 million users on how it uses advertising to offset the costs of running the company. The message, delivered by a Facebook employee in an online video, was that the ads on the social networking site were meant to be useful and not disruptive.
This week, Google jumped on the consumer education bandwagon with its Good to Know campaign. In a blog post and related print ads, the company explains to users why it stores information like the Web sites they have visited or their Internet addresses.
But consumer awareness campaigns and federal reports may not be enough to stop the debate over privacy control. “The technologies are evolving so quickly, I don’t think the education campaign ends the dialogue,” Mr. Ingis said.
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