My personal Twitter account was hacked last week. For three days, I was tweeting about my supposed 182 IQ and $500 shopping sprees. And of course I found out my account had been hacked via a wall post from a friend on Facebook: “Your Twitter account has been hacked. siiigh. Oh yeah, and call me.”

The concept of privacy has been a reoccurring train of thought for me recently. Technology has enabled our world to become more connected than ever before, but it has also presented us with the unprecedented capability to know more about people than we could ever dream. We have access to the private lives of celebrities (31 million U.S. viewers of Michael Jackson’s memorial service, anyone?). We can find old friends/acquaintances/enemies by simply typing a name into the search engine of any major social network. And we can even discover things like who was recently booked in jail by checking the arrest reports of any jail or prison website online. 

In the advertising world, privacy concerns have come to the forefront recently as well. In June, congressional hearings were held before the House of Representatives over a marketing practice called behavioral targeting. In lieu of the impending threat of government regulation of these practices, the online advertising industry responded on July 2 by releasing a strict set of standardized ethical guidelines established for companies to abide by and use to self-regulate. Among these principles is the call for all entities collecting data for behavioral targeting to disclose their practices in a “clear, prominent, and conveniently located” manner as well as the proposed establishment of a uniform icon next to all behaviorally targeted ads.

To further explain, behavioral targeting generally consists of serving up ads to internet users based on their online actions/behaviors which are tracked using cookies (computer code delivered through a web browser and stored on your computer). Prime example: A person reads a car review at an auto site, then searches for a price for that vehicle and uses an online auto calculator. The person is placed in an in-market auto segment, and ads are targeted based on their real-time behavior.

As a member of the advertising community, I’m admittedly predisposed to favoring behavioral targeting. I’m encouraged by the recent release of self-regulations agreed upon by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. I see the results of behavioral targeting compared to other types of online advertising firsthand, and can say that these types of ads typically yield very effective performance results. But not only does behavioral targeting benefit the advertiser and company; the online community also enjoys a better user experience by receiving advertisements that are more likely to be relevant and of interest (let’s face it, we’re not going to be escaping advertising messages any time soon). 

That being said, the privacy concerns that go along with behavioral targeting are absolutely legitimate and should be addressed. Here at Castle Advertising and EDUInteractive, we make sure to partner with companies that engage in behavioral targeting practices that are ethical and in compliance with national standards. Together, we do not collect personally identifiable information, install software on users’ computers, or track keystrokes. We ask key questions of our partners, including: “Do you adhere to NAI, TrustE, IAB, BTSC and are you a member?” or “Do you have a privacy policy that describes how you use behavioral data?”

For those of you who wish to learn more about behavioral targeting or to even opt out of targeted advertising delivered by NAI member ad networks, I encourage you to visit the following website: http://www.networkadvertising.org/

It’s a controversial topic, and not one that is bound to be resolved in the near future. What are your thoughts?

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