Adotas

Where media buyers start online





News

ATT pulls the behavorial targeting curtain, finds itself

Written on
Apr 29, 2009 
Author
Edward Barrera  |
Share
ATT pulls the behavorial targeting curtain, finds itself

mobile_revolution_small.jpgADOTAS — As I have said before, I think allowing companies to track you, anonymously, to give a more relevant online experience in exchange for free content is fair.

I only care about my personal identification information. If there is a way that you can control that tracking information, I’m OK with that, though that might come with a price.

But if you’re going to a bitter critic of things such as behavioral targeting, like ATT, you might want to handle it with a bit more nuance and clarity. Wendy Davis, from MediaPost, noted that ATT is itself an advertising client of behavioral targeting company Audience Science. Apparently, ATT didn’t see the irony in condemning the exact kind of businesses it was in business with, albeit it in an unclear way.  As Audience Science notes (statement below) it doesn’t use deep packet inspection techniques.  ClickZ also points out that ATT appeared to mix ISP-based ad targeting with cookie-based ad targeting.

ATT put out a statement (the full statement is below) afterward. But ATT is being disingenuous, saying, about behavioral targeting, that it does not “hire other firms to do so on our behalf,” yet later says it uses ad networks.

Here’s what Dorothy Attwoord, senior vp, public policy and chief privacy officer, had to say to a House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet:

“While the companies represented here today generally are not engaged in behavioral advertising, search engines and online advertising networks – have moved well past experimentation and have deployed sophisticated methods of tracking, targeting and delivering advertising to online consumers.. [snippet]…These techniques include, by way of example, an ad network “dropping” third-party tracking “cookies” on a consumer’s computer to capture consumer visits to any one of thousands of unrelated websites; embedding software on PCs; or automatically downloading applications that – unbeknownst to the consumer – log the consumer’s full session of browsing activity.”

It’s fun watching politicians go overboard, and corporations throw everybody but themselves under the bus. Of course, this is the same company that decided to misuse its own customers, so…

Statement from ATT:

“We have called on everyone in the internet ecosystem to step out of the cloud of invisibility to give consumers more transparency and control of their online information, and we welcome this discussion.

“We’ve consistently and repeatedly said that in our role as a publisher and advertiser we in fact do use ad networks, just like many other companies do and we’ve always made that clear to Congress, policymakers and other stakeholders.

“We are looking at the best way we can meaningfully communicate to our customers about data use even when we are acting as an advertiser.”

Statement from Audience Science:

“AudienceScience is a leading behavioral targeting company. As an active member of the NAI, we are laser-focused on protecting consumer privacy and comply with the 2008 NAI Principles. The 2008 NAI Principles provide a [self-regulatory] code of conduct for third-party online behavioral advertising and the use of deep packet inspection techniques are outside of the scope of those Principles.

It is standard practice for advertisers to utilize retargeting, whereby a consumer visits the advertiser site and that consumer then has a cookie placed in their browser. With this cookie, the consumer can be targeted for an advertisement, after they leave the advertiser site with advertising from that same advertiser. No data or information about the consumer is being supplied to, or by, third parties. Advertisers utilize this retargeting methodology with major portals, sites and networks worldwide. Advertisers utilizing this technique should have privacy policies that provide appropriate disclosure about the collection and use of information on their Web site…”

– Express your opinion, comment below.





Reader Comments.

No comments yet

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

Tags: , , , and
Article Sponsor

More News


  • Once Facebook goes public, what's the most important thing it'll need to do in order to live up the expectations of its real value?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...

Adotas Partnership