It appears the IAB may be preparing to make the case for less regulation in online advertising. According to a new MediaPost article by Wendy Davis, the IAB has produced a seven minute video featuring small, independent publishers and editors who depend on online advertising to support their sites. The concern is that more internet regulation by lawmakers could result in blanket legislation that cuts off the revenue stream that small site publishers depend on from advertising support. The video has been taken off the IAB site for now, but is expected to be used to demonstrate ties between the importance of advertising for small digital publishers and economic growth.
Privacy proponents claim the video clip represents a one-dimensional argument that fails to even address consumer privacy. Lawmakers are increasingly interested in protecting consumers from behavioral targeting practices that advertisers use, and legislation to regulate behavioral targeting is being proposed in New York, Connecticut and Massachussets, as well as by Congress. In addition, as discussed in an earlier post, the FTC is chomping at the bit to increase enforcement on online marketing as a whole.
I think the real issue here lies in advertisers implementing stronger data governance. Data governance, as defined by IBM, is “a quality control discipline for assessing, managing, using, improving, monitoring, maintaining, and protecting organizational information.” Timo Elliot reveals the results of a Kalido survey on the Smart Data Collective, which state two thirds of companies have no clear data governance program and that 13% of companies have no idea what data governance is. If this is any indication of what happens to the consumer data that websites collect for behavioral targeting purposes, government officials are and ought to be concerned about stronger regulations. Online marketers have to implement stronger data protection guidelines and self-regulation through data governance before the case can be made for less government regulation.
