New Bill Could be a Challenge for Google and Other Ad Agencies
Category: Future Predictions, Google, Online Marketing, Online News, SEM
A recent New York assemblyman called Richard L. Brodsky has put together a bill that if passed will make it punishable or even illegal to collect personal information about internet user and the clicks they make on advertisements.
He assemblyman stated:
“Should these companies be able to sell or use what’s essentially private data without permission? The easy answer is absolutely not.”
The passing of such a law would cripple a lot of the big online advertising agencies like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, making it somewhat less attractive for advertisers with big online marketing budgets as the delivery of their ads would be less targeted.
Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania stated in the New York Times:
“A law like this essentially takes some of the gold away from marketers. But it’s the right thing to do. Consumers have no idea how much information is being collected about them, and the advertising industry should have to deal with that.”
This is one of the reasons for the Adsense terms of service update Google made a few months ago stating all publishers to clearly state in they privacy policy if they were collecting any information from visitors. If a publisher does not comply to the new Google terms, then they risk loosing the right to publish Google ads on their website(s).
Funny enough, Microsoft is for the passing of this Bill as it will affect competitors like Google and yahoo! which is a bonus for them of course.
Although this bill is far from being passed anytime soon, it is still a sign of what could be to come in the future and big advertising agencies are already following par and taking measures toward this possible.
If bills such as these were to pass we would still however be able to target through keyword selection, and we would still have generic traffic figures and market research information. So there is not too much to worry about from the marketers perspective, however, it does cause concern to the advertising agencies collecting user information as they could be faced with law suits from the governmental bodies or even from competitors trying to find the edge.
