Erica DeLorenzo: November 2007 Archives

Welcome to Day 2 of the FTC ehavioral Advertising Town Hall. The audience has not waned in number or interest and it promises to be another day of dialogue, debate and, hopefully, increased appreciation of advertising-subsidized online content and services.

 

The first panel focused on Disclosures to Consumers: the ways they are currently made, how they’re being improved, and if consumers read, act on or are even aware of these notices. To be sure, devising the best mechanisms to provide both the most meaningful consumer experience as well as maintaining consumer trust is not an easy task. As was noted today by Martin Abrams, Executive Director at The Center for Information Policy Leadership, consumers just do not universally have the time to (or maybe even interest in) learn more about how their browsing behavior is being used to deliver more targeted, relevant commercial messages. 

 

So we may never reach all of the people all of the time with this information, no matter how transparent and verbose. Rather, he says, we need to identify the role of the privacy notice itself.  What these posted policies do is create a sense of accountability by defining how you can expect organization is going to behave and provide the mechanism against which an organization’s practices can be measured by the appropriate regulatory bodies. That’s very different than forcing consumers to read notices and police the market themselves.