Data collection and use as it relates to online behavioral...

comments to the FTC. The commission is reviewing about 40 comments suggesting how best to update its framework on how federal advertising law applies to Internet ads and sales (WID May 27 p8). New media, like mobile apps and digital signage, “present challenges for transparency that we urge the commission to address through its updated ‘Dot Com Disclosures’ guidelines,” CDT said. Studies and reports demonstrate that the data collection activities occurring through ads and Web bugs “violate the typical consumer’s expectation of privacy.” The think tank also urged the FTC to require “in-ad” notices: The requirement should extend to mobile ads and to sites “where behaviorally-targeted advertisements are not shown, but third-party data collection is nonetheless occurring.” Due to the increased chance of confusion from multiple offers, subscription upsellers “should abide by a set of best practices to present consumers with legitimate, readily understood offers and meaningful consumer protections,” CDT said. Major advertising associations support the current framework and urged the FTC to allow self-regulation to flourish. Without a specific showing that consumers are no longer being served by the framework, “the principles that companies have relied upon for the previous decade should continue to guide them going forward,” the Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers said in joint comments. Self-regulation “remains the most responsive, effective, efficient and appropriate way to promote responsible marketing and advertising.” They also urged the commission to allow mobile marketing to develop best practices: In the mobile space, “proscriptive rules would become quickly outdated, potentially inhibiting innovation or allowing technology to outpace consumer protection.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau agreed that the existing framework should remain intact. The FTC should keep in mind that online advertising generates significant consumer and economic benefits, IAB said. It cautioned against creating disparity between requirements imposed on online and offline advertising. Unique and highly proscriptive rules for certain media “will restrict the entire advertising ecosystem, especially as advertisers increasingly incorporate many different advertising media into single campaigns,” IAB said.