Behavioral advertising, as it is broadly defined, is the “tracking of a consumer’s activities online over time– including the searches a consumer has conducted, the web pages visited, and the content viewed – in order to deliver advertising targeted to the individual consumer’s interest.” The practice is currently self-regulated by the industry under the guidance of the revised FTC “Principles.”
The FTC has effectively been involved in behavioral advertising since the mid-nineties when e-commerce emerged. As early as 1999, the FTC and the Department of Commerce jointly sponsored a workshop examining the privacy implications of early iterations of behavioral targeting. Then in 2007, the FTC held a 2-day “Ehavioral Town Hall” to discuss behavioral advertising in a public forum. Based on the rich dialog from all interested parties, the FCC proposed a set of governing Principles, which were not publicly re-introduced to the docket until recently. In February of this year, the FTC released a revised set of guiding Principles to more tightly govern the practice of behavioral advertising online. Notably, with these revisions also came a statement by the FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz saying, “This could be the last clear chance to show that self-regulation can—and will—effectively protect consumers’ privacy in a dynamic marketplace. ”
The following are the premises of the four Principles :
• Transparency and Consumer Control
• Reasonable Security, and Limited Data Retention, for Consumer Data
• Affirmative Express Consent for Material Changes to Existing Privacy Promises
• Affirmative Express Consent to (or Prohibition Against) Using Sensitive Data for Behavioral Advertising
Note: The details of each, including their new modifications, are covered in full in the FTC Staff report.
