Kate Kaye spoke at our event on privacy on Thursday, May 19. As
a Senior Editor at ClickZ, she covers the interactive ad industry and follows the latest developments in privacy-related legislation. We asked for her take on what’s going on with privacy in Congress right now.
Tell us about ClickZ and your role there as Senior Editor.
I’m essentially a daily news reporter covering the online ad industry for ClickZ News. I focus specifically on regulatory and legislative efforts affecting the industry, in addition to digital political and advocacy campaigns. I’ve been covering the online ad industry for around 10 years now, and ClickZ is 14 years old.
You’ve been covering the developments of online privacy bills in Congress. How do you think legislation such as a Do Not Track bill would impact business practices?
I think it already is affecting legitimate businesses in the space, at least in terms of the industry finally coming together to launch a wide-reaching self-regulatory initiative. Through the Digital Ad Alliance program, online advertisers are at least becoming accustomed to incorporating more notice and transparency and consumer opt-out choice in their targeted display campaigns. Still, what legislation could do is give the FTC more power to enforce more stringent rules around notice, transparency, and opt-out, be that through a prescribed do-not-track type mechanism, or something else. Also, there’s a key difference between what the DAA has enabled and what the FTC and much of the legislation is pushing for; that is, the ability to opt out from ad tracking as well as targeting.
The final legislation will also most likely affect mobile marketers, specifically when it comes to location-based tracking. For instance, it could limit the ability for marketers to track locations of minors.
What are some obstacles to a Do Not Track bill or similar legislation passing How is the advertising/marketing industry reacting to some of these proposals?
It seems to me the biggest obstacle to comprehensive privacy legislation (which could include a do not track type requirement) is that federal legislators have other arguably more important issues at hand. There have been several House and Senate hearings in the past couple years about data privacy and security, but to me, the discussions have all seemed very preliminary. Plus, lawmakers will be increasingly focused on the 2012 elections as the months roll on. If they think sponsoring or supporting such a law will help their own campaigns or their party’s election results, they’d probably be more likely to put forth efforts towards getting something passed. However, there’s no question that in this year alone the privacy bill pile-on indicates that we’re closer than ever to actual federal legislation being passed. Keep in mind I’m not a Capitol Hill insider!