Digital advertising: August 2008 Archives

Following swiftly on from Google's decision to allow a one-click unsubscribe to ad targeting on Google and Doubleclick, Yahoo has now announced a similar one-click unsubscribe from ad targeting on its site. 

Yahoo's announcement comes as part of its response to the request from the House of Representatives committee early last week for information from thirty major internet companies about their ad targeting plans.

Looks like this is  becoming a hot issue on the other side of the Atlantic - don't expect any political developments in the UK though, as parliament is well into its long summer holiday right now.  I wonder if any prominent UK brands will start offering a similar opt-out to targeted advertising.

I think that privacy and control will be big issues in digital marketing this year, so it's interesting to see that Google are now offering an explicity opt-out from cookies set either by Google or by their adserving network Doubleclick.  This button is very prominently displayed on Google's main page about Advertising and Privacy.

Reuters reports that a committee at the House of Representatives has sent letters to 30 key Internet companies including Google and Microsoft querying their use of targeting techniques and specifically asking if they: "tailored, or facilitated the tailoring of, Internet advertising based on consumers Internet search, surfing, or other use."

The committee is particularly interested in 'deep packet inspection'.  Deep packet inspection is a technique that basically looks at the content of data - like a request for a web page - as it whizzes around the internet, reads the data and in this case looks for opportunities to serve up relevant advertising.  It's exactly the same technique that Phorm in the UK is planning to use.

In the US, the concern is whether consumers have been made aware that deep packet inspection is in operation.  At least one of the committee members feels that consumers should give their permission prior to these techniques being deployed - which frankly would be one hell of a sell to consumers.