Push to promote behavioural ads

The online advertising industry is attempting to appease Brussels – and consumers – with the launch of campaign to promote the benefits of behavioural ads.
The push, which will herald the relaunch of the controversial ad icon, will focus on what behavioural ads pay for, such as video sites, music and games and show how they “help pay for the content you enjoy”. It will also explain to consumers how they can control their data online.
It has been put together by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA).
WFA managing director Stephan Loerke claims the campaign will help to make EU regulators understand how behavioural ads contribute to the wider economy. Meanwhile IAB director of regulatory affairs Nick Stringer said the consumer campaign and the relaunch of youronlinechoices.eu will help the advertising icon become as recognisable as the recycling logo.
But whether it will be enough to appease Brussels is a moot point. There has been a sustained attack on the icon-based scheme, which points consumers to the youronlinechoices.eu website, virtually since launch. Some commentators claimed it was just a ‘fudge’ to avoid tighter regulation, while others branded it ‘meaningless’.
The influential Article 29 Working Party – made up of EU member state data protection chiefs – recently called for it to be scrapped altogether and replaced with a proper ‘do-not-track’ scheme.
The online behavioural advertising market is estimated to be worth between £64m and £95m a year in the UK, according to figures from the Office of Fair Trading.
Stringer added: “We want people to interact with the logo and start making more informed choices and to do that we have to really get the word out there and explain to people what it does.”

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