77% of behavioural ads flout rules

The ad watchdog is taking nearly 300 companies to task over their use of online behavioural advertising after a monitoring exercise exposed that over three-quarters (77%) of businesses are failing to tell customers they are being tracked.
The Advertising Standards Authority took over the policing of online behavioural ads (OBA) in February this year, and despite the fact it has received just 77 complaints so far, it has identified a worrying lack of compliance.
The vast majority of complaints to the ASA were about opting out, although it notes that most complainants only had only a “basic awareness of what OBA was and little understanding” of how it worked.
Of the 386 websites the regulator monitored, 297 third party websites were in potential breach of the ad code because the notification of tracking was either not present or was not clear enough as described in rules. It has contacted 29 companies directly, although the rest have proved more elusive as they operate outside the UK. The ASA has written to the relevant international self-regulatory partners so they can take action if they have a mandate to do so.
The ASA said: “Taking on responsibility for regulating some aspects of OBA has been challenging and rewarding for the ASA. The low level of incoming consumer complaints has given us the opportunity to ensure that each complainant is offered very thorough and detailed advice and guidance.”
The behavioural advertising industry has vehemently resisted calls for tougher regulation of the market, insisting its AdChoices icon – linked to a consumer advice website – is more than an adequate means of policing the sector.
Earlier this year the IAB launched a major marketing push, backed by an estimated £3m spend – to educate the public about how the technique works, and its benefits.
However, the European Commission’s Article 29 Working Party – made up of data protection chiefs from individual EU states – has warned the industry that the current approach does not comply with Europe’s recently revised ePrivacy laws.
There has been a sustained attack on the icon-based scheme virtually since launch. Some commentators claimed it was just a ‘fudge’ to avoid tighter regulation, while in 2011 the Article 29 Working Party itself deemed it ‘meaningless’.

77% of behavioural ads flout rules

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