From left, Alan Chapell, Charles Curran, Ramsey McGrory, Scott Meyer, George Pappachen, Omar Tawakol

While distinct perspectives abounded, there was consensus across the table on how imperative it was that we, as an industry, come together fast to define the user experience around interest-based advertising and make self-regulation meaningful. And, as Omar described, it shouldn’t really be that hard to move the needle. Be honest with the consumer and make the transparency and choice experience easy to understand, and we’ll start to make an impact. There are signs from Washington, which is acutely aware of the complexities involved with implementing something like this, that they’re really counting the industry to innovate and solve this problem. We (the industry) been given the ball—now we have to run with it.

Logically, much of the conversation focused on consumer perspectives—from the actual level of concern about privacy to the question of the “value exchange.” Is just getting a more relevant ad enough, or will some consumers be interested in monetizing their own data? Perhaps there’s a social component to it (as Esther Dyson recently suggested in the Huffington Post)? Further research will help us figure this out going forward.

Regardless, the essence of this is really still about true transparency and choice for the consumer, and the BlueKai panel was another great forum for working toward that goal.

Colin focused on three fundamental things:

1. Billions of dollars are at stake. Research, including a study by the Ponemon Institute we discussed previously, has made it clear that marketers are spending a lot less on interest-based advertising because of privacy concerns (the study’s sample group representing $600 million in lost spending). That equates to $39 billion in lost sales because data is not being deployed.

2. Self-regulation is happening. Consumers are scared (63% favor law to immediately delete behavioral info;67% believe they’ve lost control of their personal information), and the government is drafting legislation to protect them. Meaningful self-regulation is our best hope for protecting consumers and driving growth in our industry; it’s in every digital ad business’s best interest to get on board with the Coalition’s program.

3. Better Advertising will power it. We’ll provide the technology platform that enables all ad businesses–marketers, agencies, networks, publishers, data and other solutions providers–to be accountable to consumers and foster trust online.

Here’s Colin’s presentation. Many thanks again to OMMA for a great show.

This continued validation is very important to us. We are excited to see more of it as we move forward. As always, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook for the latest news or subscribe to our RSS feed.

“A coalition representing advertisers and Internet companies released a set of voluntary guidelines last July, calling for websites and advertisers to clearly explain how they track and use information about consumers’ Web activities.

The new policing system is designed to determine whether websites and ad companies that collect data on consumers are complying with those guidelines. This includes making disclosures about how they are collecting and using the information and providing a simple way for consumers to opt out of having their information tracked. The groups involved in the effort don’t have any enforcement authority, but they hope to use peer pressure and the threat of public exposure to bring violators into line.

The group tapped Better Advertising Project, a start-up formed last summer by former About.com CEO Scott Meyer, for the technology to monitor the industry, according to people familiar with the matter.

Plans call for New York-based Better Advertising Project to collect anonymous data from a variety of sources, including a panel of about 300,000 people who have volunteered to use its Ghostery software, the people familiar with the matter say.”

Stay tuned for more useful information.  Subscribe to our Blog (get the RSS feed here), and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.  We’re also always on the lookout for great people to join our team.

Today we take a key next step.  Our Design Partners will begin rolling out our first campaigns with Better Advertising powering their Power I icon implementation (which was co-developed by WPP and the Future of Privacy Forum).  Michael Learmonth did a great job of describing what we provide in Advertising Age:

The system, deployed by a start-up called Better Advertising, will place an icon in the upper right-hand corner of the ads that looks like a cross between an eye and power button called the ”power eye.” Consumers who mouse over the icon will get a view of all the data that was used to target the ad, as well as the option to opt-out of future targeting by those companies…

The system will also provide advertises with a new kind of feedback mechanism from consumers. While today they measure effectiveness of ads by the rate at which people click or interact with them, soon they will also get data on how many people found the ad objectionable enough that they decided to opt out of the targeting behind it.

Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the ads, mind you, just the targeting. But the opt-out will give marketers a new view into how their ads — and their brands — are perceived. The prevailing hypothesis is that greater transparency will lead to greater trust among consumers. But even the most enthusiastic supporters of the project also see risk.

We’re obviously optimistic that the industry will continue to rally behind Self-Regulation.  FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has left the door open for us.  Just last month he stated in Multichannel News:

” ‘So long as self-regulation is making forward progress, the FTC is not interested in regulating in this area,’ he said during a keynote speech at a plenary session on advertising at Cable Show 2010. He also said the commission has “great hopes” for proposed self-regulatory guidelines proposed by direct and online marketers in conjunction with the Better Business Bureau.”

This is the time.  We’ve got all the key elements aligning to make Self-Regulation a success.  We’re very excited to be a part of it.  Stay tuned…

Today, The Ponemon Institute is releasing a benchmarking study of online advertisers entitled: “Economic Impact of Privacy on Online Behavioral Advertising.” It’s a very robust piece of research, and the findings are pretty staggering:

• 88 out of 90 companies surveyed have restricted their online behavioral advertising because of privacy concerns.
• In aggregate these companies would employ as much as four times as much OBA spending as they do today, if it were not for these privacy concerns.  The report estimates that approximately 75 percent of would-be OBA spending is curtailed because privacy issues.  This represents more than $600 million dollars that are being held out of the online advertising ecosystem.
• All these advertisers want to use more OBA.  They see it as the most efficient, highest ROI marketing channel they use, with a 50% higher ROI than regular online display advertising. There is much detail around this in the study, both qualitative and qualitative.

Steve Lohr wrote about these findings in The New York Times Bits Blog, and I think he has a good, balanced take on what this means to those of us in the Online Advertising business.

My input to the story is around what a significant turning point the Self-Regulatory program that we’re involved with truly is.  This is the first study that puts a price tag on the impact of the success of this program – we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars in increased online ad spending.  That translates to billions of dollars of new revenue for online marketers.

In sum, the stakes have never been higher, and the opportunity has never been larger for all of us.  I’m confident that we’ll continue down the path to make these privacy concerns a thing of the past for advertisers, consumers and the government.

Read more over at Larry Ponemon’s Blog

You can check out the press release here, and read the release notes over at the Ghostery Blog.

We’ve been very involved with this process (you’ll see some Better Advertising images on page 15 of the detailed spec).  These specs will be incorporated into the campaigns that we’re rolling out with our Design Partners starting in May.

Alan Chapell moderated the panel and the agency reps included Mike Venables (NEO@Ogilvy, a Better Advertising Design Partner), Adam Kasper (Media Contacts, Havas, also a Better Advertising Design Partner), Michael Andrew (Mediasmith), and Melissa Adams (Organic). There was broad consensus across the panel on the importance of addressing privacy issues for the continued growth of the behavioral data market, with Adam Kasper adding:

A ‘watershed moment’ is coming for behavioral targeting when consumers gain greater awareness of the extent to which their online activity can be tracked and targeted, triggering a backlash.’

Melissa Adams highlighted the push that clients are making on privacy issues:

Clients are already asking more questions about behavioral targeting even as they are drawn to its promise of more effective Web campaigns … Clients are more interested in the details of where data is coming from than in the past .. it’s positive if we can educate clients about the anonymity of it all and how it’s used to their benefit, but it’s a big bridge to cross to get them to understand there are safeguards in place.

It’s a big bridge, but with commitment and technology, we’ll get there. Better Advertising is leading a charge with a coalition of leading agencies and technology providers to address these privacy concerns head on, bring true transparency and choice options directly to the consumer, and to assure marketing brands that the waters are safe. Look for our beta launch in Q2 of this year.

MediaPost summary of the panel: Media Buyers Fear Backlash To BT, Warn ‘Watershed’ Moment Is Coming.

Better Advertising is working to create something totally new–a trusted intermediary between advertisers and consumers.  We will help consumers better understand and control how online ads are targeted to them based on their behaviors. In the process, Better Advertising will power self-regulatory programs that will satisfy the government’s demands on advertisers.  Ultimately, this can help advertisers increase the amount of money they dedicate to online advertising, thus keeping much Internet content free.

There’s no direct analog to what we’re doing.  So in some ways, it can be confusing to explain. We’ve found out just how hard that is since we acquired Ghostery a few weeks ago.  Fortunately, that experience has led us to make some changes to our website that we hope will more clearly define what we do and how it’s a huge benefit for consumers.

To be clear–we are not an advertising agency, advertising network, advertising data collector, advertising exchange or any other type of company that collects and uses online consumer behavior for advertising purposes.  Any data that we collect is never transferred to any other party or used for any advertising-related purpose.

As we’ve discussed previously, Ghostery is a very powerful browser add-on.  It shows every company that is collecting data through script-based web bugs on more than 4.9 million websites.  Ghostery users can find out more information and individually, or entirely, block these companies from collecting data.  A large number of the 2 million people who have downloaded Ghostery have opted-in to anonymously, and in aggregate, share data on the trackers they encounter so that Ghostery can continually improve.

Ghostery now has engineers and customer service people dedicated to building out great product improvements and expand the types and number of trackers that we identify for consumers.  We had assumed that Ghostery users would recognize our commitment to protecting the data that Ghostery collects.  So, we appreciate comments from Ghostery users that point out parts of our website that are confusing.

As a result, we’ve made some key changes to our site.  We’ve added a new “For Consumers” link on our home page.  This page links to more detailed information about what we do and clarifies other changes on our site. We’ve also created an FAQ for Ghostery that we hope will illustrate that our mission has only the best interests of Ghostery users at heart.  They’re our interests too, after all.

We look forward to hearing your comments on this post.