Even though the FTC can enforce such policies, it may be difficult for users to determine what the ad networks are doing with the data they receive from users that have opted out of tracking. Third, many critics worry that any cookie-based opt-out mechanism still involves sending data to ad networks that the ad networks could use to track users-despite promises in their privacy policies not to do so. For the Chrome and Safari Web browsers (which do not support plug-ins), Google has outlined a simple procedure whereby users can achieve the same result. Google moots this argument too: While Google's opt-out also relies on a special opt-out cookie, Google has created an easily installed plug-in for the two most common Web browsers, Internet Explorer and Firefox, that ensures that the opt-out cookie is automatically recreated even if a user deletes their cookies. Indeed, many users do precisely that on a regular basis through either their browser or antivirus software-thus erasing their own opt-out choice.
Second and most importantly, privacy advocates decry NAI's opt-out because it isn't "persistent"- i.e., it requires the placement of a special "opt-out cookie" on the user's computer, which may be inadvertently deleted when users delete all their cookies. Google moots this argument by making its opt-out easily accessible to anyone who clicks on the "Ads by Google" link that appears beneath every IBA-targeted ad. But privacy advocates have objected on three grounds:įirst, privacy advocates argue that it's currently too hard for users to find the NAI opt-out tool since users don't know which ad network is serving which ads and there's no obvious way to get from an ad to the opt-out option. NAI lets users opt-out of receiving ads based on OBA targeting. Indeed, Google has done precisely what Adam Thierer and I have called for: giving consumers more granular control over their own privacy preferences by developing better tools.įor roughly a decade, the OBA industry has operated under a self-regulatory scheme developed by the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI). The Ad Preference Manager sets a new "gold standard" for implementing the principles of Notice and Choice, which have formed the core of both OBA industry self-regulation and the various regulatory proposals made in recent years. Google's position as the leading search engine and third party ad-delivery network will no doubt cause paroxysms of privacy hysteria among those who consider targeted advertising inherently invasive, unfair or manipulative.īut those whose first priority is advancing consumer privacy, not advancing a political or regulatory agenda, should applaud Google for excluding sensitive categories and for putting the new Ad Preference Manager at the core of the company's new IBA program. Google is sure to be attacked for crossing a "line in the sand" drawn by some privacy advocates between contextual and behavioral advertising-even though Google's closest competitor, Yahoo!, already offers a similar program, and the concept in general is hardly new. Until now, (i) AdSense has delivered essentially "contextual" advertising by choosing which ad to display on a page based on an algorithmic analysis of keywords on that page and (ii) Google has tracked users' browsing only for analytics purposes-to limit the number of times a user sees a particular ad (to prevent overexposure) and to allow sequencing of ads in campaigns where one ad must follow another. This tailoring will be based on a profile of each user's interests created by tracking their browsing activity across sites that use AdSense-but not search queries or other user information.
Google's new "Interest Based Advertising" (IBA) program represents the company's first foray into what is generally called "Online Behavioral Advertising" (OBA): In order to deliver more relevant advertising, Google will begin tailoring ads delivered through AdSense on the Google Content Network (GCN) and (but not ).