On-Demand Privacy

First, an update - in my first blog post, I mentioned the FTC guidelines on Native Advertising that had been issued in late December. There has been more talk about these guidelines at Hearst in the last month – conversation driven both by the need for transparency to consumers as well as the FTC continuing the conversation. I think it’s mostly been positive, but I am not sure who I agree with:

*The columnists who think that there will be more native advertising now that there are clearer guidelines, which will make the larger, more conservative marketers jump into native, or

*Those who think that now native will decline as the factories that were trying to sneak in advertising as content will now have to change their business model too much to survive.

I will say that some of the least favorite conversations I have had in this business have been those in which VERY inexperienced agency people try to tell me what kind of stories my editors should write for my readers, stories that would either plug their client’s category of products or specific brand-name products. (No, we didn’t write those stories). It is this kind of self-serving selling-out by publishers that the FTC is trying to combat, and I think that’s a good thing. As an FYI, we have been told that if the FTC thinks you are trying to deceive your readers, that you will essentially be put into the penalty box FOR 20 YEARS. As I get more information, I will share it.

What I missed initially is that at that same conference in December, according to AdAge:

             

“FTC Commissioner Julie Brill implied that the FTC might crack down on cross-device marketing and native advertising unless the ad industry better empowers consumers to control how and where they are tracked.”

I know that a division of our company can track users across devices and that it is a powerful date point for some marketers. Apparently the commissioner was unclear about what “crack down” means, but in the data-focused world in which we now live, marketers won’t like this development. Consumers would now have the ability to both ad-block and opt out of cross-device tracking, which will mean marketers have to get ever more creative in their delivery of messages. I imagine there will be much more to come on this front.

However, I do find it ironic that this is the same government who wants Apple to create a back-door into the locked iPhone of one of the San Berardino shooters. So, protecting the privacy of consumers is important to the government….until it’s not? And, for what it’s worth, I believe that law enforcement is important, but the problem is that this is a slippery slope, because not everyone in law enforcement (or government) is ethically pure as new snow.