Dive Brief:
- The digital ad industry had plenty of warning that consumer privacy changes were coming to how ISPs shared consumer data, but at the eleventh hour the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for more time to respond to those changes.
- Those changes were approved late last month and require ISPs – such as Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable – to obtain explicit opt-in from consumers before sharing with third-parties, such as advertisers.
- The regulations were published on April 1, with 57 days for the industry to respond before the final ruling. The ANA is asking for an additional 60 days.
Dive Insight:
Given that the industry has a terrible track record of self-regulating and protecting the end user, the new regulations from the FCC were not unexpected. Which makes the ANA's request for more time to review and respond to the changes seem like their priorities lie elsewhere.
Consumers have grown more skeptical of the ad agency, as evidenced by the rise in ad blocking, and updated privacy policies are one small step forward toward resolution. The problem is that the ANA's dragging their feet on responding to the FCC's action hints that the lesson that transparency in marketing is always the best policy, especially to improve interactions with consumers, hasn't quite sunk in.
Terrible user experience with online advertising is a key driver of ad blocking technology, a development that hurts advertisers, ad tech firms and publishers alike.
And data is a powerful marketing tool, but it must be used responsibly. Allowing consumers to opt-in to having their data used beyond business reasons, such as billing as the FCC is now requiring, may force marketers to be more up front about the value of sharing that data. It may also create an audience that actually wants to hear what marketers have to say.