The 10 companies shortlisted for Media Player of the Year in Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue were at the top of their game in 2012. We’ll be featuring each one online as a lead-up to our January 2013 issue, where you’ll find out which media company will reign supreme.
Debates continue as advertisers, governments, media companies and the public test privacy boundaries
None can doubt the importance of the privacy debate on online marketing when considering how much ink the issue gets in the press, or how much money is being spent studying, lobbying and developing solutions for accessing consumer data.
Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, has become the face of this issue in Canada. At a time when many media executives have huge expectations for the potential of online targeting and many consumers seem willing to be targeted, Stoddart is committed to defending consumer privacy, nonetheless.
She’s gone head-to-head with politicians, called out Facebook, chastised Canadian websites that leaked data, and driven initiatives to educate the public.
This year’s privacy debates actually began in Dec. 2011, when Stoddart released a guidance document outlining her stance on online behavioural advertising (OBA) – the practice of tracking internet users to serve them ads relevant to their behaviour. Her guidelines were simple: be transparent, be direct in communicating users’ options and don’t track children.
Canadian laws such as PIPEDA have made some portions of the issue very clear cut, but with international players such as Facebook and Microsoft changing policies with little industry consultation, marketers have been playing catch up to what technology has done to public expectation.
To address Stoddart’s OBA concerns, IAB Canada announced a plan to enact a program similar to the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) American initiative. As users visit websites, it identifies behaviour-tracking tools with a blue triangular icon that, when clicked, explains OBA and provides an opt out. Many of America’s biggest advertisers have signed up as supporters.
The Canadian version was tentatively scheduled to launch this fall, but the roll-out has been slow going.
“I must say that I’m a bit disappointed that things are moving so slowly,” Stoddart told Marketing. “We had hoped that by this time, [the IAB] would have its website and the icon would be usable.”
IAB Canada president Chris Williams says the organization has not been lazy. The international nature of the issue (multiple countries with differing standards serving media into Canada) means “more people at the table and it takes longer to implement a homegrown solution… We can’t have all di fferent symbols for each country with different ways to opt out.”
Williams says the IAB is “very close” to rolling out the DAA icon and an awareness campaign. However, if the matter was not complicated enough, research from Carnegie Mellon University suggests the DAA’s e fforts thus far have not been e ffective – study participants thought the icon would open new ads or sell ad space, not let them opt out of tracking.
Canadians are also watching a very public argument between Microsoft and advertisers. The new version of Internet Explorer launched with “Do Not Track” as its default privacy setting. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) opposed this, saying the move will “potentially eliminate the ability to collect web-viewing data of up to 43% of the browsers used by Americans.”
The DAA then said it might just tell members to ignore the browser’s Do Not Track setting althogether, and launched the Data-Driven Marketing Institute, a lobbying division tasked to “educate consumers about all the great benefits they enjoy because [of] data-driven marketing.”
It also wants to begin “tamping down unfavorable media attention” the issue is receiving.
The issue will rear its head in Canada, too. While Stoddart says “there is no option under Canadian law” for advertisers to ignore a user’s privacy choices, as the DAA suggests it might do, Williams says the issue is foggy from a technological standpoint. Many advertisers are confused, he says, about what info “Do Not Track” covers. Cookies? Browsing history? Volunteered info?
“There are a lot of questions from publishers whether they need to respect the signal from the browser or not, and what precedent that sets,” he says.
And then there’s the possible consumer backlash. Consider Safety Minister Vic Toews, who in February introduced Bill C-30 – the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act” – that would increase police authority in accessing online user data without a warrant. Critics balked at the Orwellian overtones. Stoddart criticized the bill more diplomatically, saying “it needs a clear justification as to why this is the only way to go.” Toews tried to keep the discussion rooted in public safety: “either stand with us or with the child pornographers,” he said. Marketers should note how fast and loud the backlash was.
All these issues prove digital marketers are trying to track several targets at once. With consumer attitudes and government opinion in flux, it was Stoddart who has largely shaped the debate this far, and looks ready to continue to do so next year.
To read more about the companies that made the Media Players of the Year and Marketers of the Year shortlists, check out Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue, which is on newsstands now.
