Rothenberg warns of threat to research in behavioural targeting row

US-- Interactive Advertising Bureau chief Randall Rothenberg has warned of the threat posed to advertising research practices if lawmakers adopt some of the proposals being touted to regulate behavioural targeting.

Rothenberg was particularly irked by a bill before the New York State Assembly earlier this year aiming to curtail “online preference marketing”.

Speaking on a Citigroup-organised conference call last week, he said that the bill “defined online preference marketing as ‘the collection of data, including non-personally identifiable data, across websites or pages in order to define or predict consumer characteristics or preferences for the purpose of advertising delivery'.

“If you listen to those words, that is basically the definition of advertising research and that is what they seek to constrain,” he said.

Rothenberg made his comments on the same day privacy advocates, consumer groups, web publishers and advertising firms clashed in a senate committee hearing over the use of anonymous web browsing data to deliver better targeted advertising.

“We know from study after study that the reason people love interactive media is the ability to get relevant content, including relevant advertising content,” said Rothenberg. “That sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from spam. So when you give people the choice between irrelevant spam and relevant advertising they almost universally say we want relevant advertising.

“Marketers want [behavioural targeting]; publishers, vendors and agencies want to bring it off. There are ways to bring it off that are in the marketplace right now that don't have any impact on people's privacy whatsoever because they use non-identifiable information and they aren't being connected in any way to databases containing identifying information.

“Groups have made it seem that there are privacy issues,” he said. “But the real agenda is to put plain vanilla ad research – the ad research processes that have been with us for 80 years – under a regulatory regime. Their goal is not just to regulate interactive advertising and marketing but to back-regulate a lot of forms of advertising delivery and advertising research.”

Referring back to the New York bill – which has been pulled but is expected to return in the next legislative session – Rothenberg said: “It's the craziness of these proposals that we want to highlight to ensure that congress – folks like Senator Dorgan [who led the senate committee hearing] – don't go too far down the path here.”

A meeting of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the internet yesterday heard calls from congressmen to require internet service providers to get opt-in consent from their customers before they start tracking web browsing habits.

Author: Brian Tarran