Privacy

It’s been a while since we discussed privacy issues surrounding social media. With the holiday season approaching, fierce competition for every online gift dollar brings this to forefront again.

New Wrinkles
Just last week the Wall Street Journal published an article saying that Mastercard and Visa are independently developing technology to connect consumer transactions to individual online profile information. In other words, they are working on ways to directly link your purchases with your identity on Facebook, Google+ etc. to target ads to you based on your spending habits.

In response to the article, Senator Rockefeller, who introduced the Do-Not-Track legislation earlier this year, sent a letter to the credit card companies asking for a clarification of their intentions.  In a perfect world, precise ad targeting provides a helpful service to consumers and retailers alike. Because this is not a perfect world, consumers have good reason question the idea of their personal information being collected, aggregated, packaged and sold without their knowledge. In the company’s response to Rockefeller’s letter, Visa said the data would only be collected with a customer's consent.

Expanding to Mobile
In October, the Mobile Marketing Association issued mobile app privacy guidelines for development similar to those issued by the Digital Advertising Alliance earlier this year. The guidelines ask that apps describe how “precise real-time location information” is gathered and used.  It should explain in clear layman’s terms and offer consumers the opportunity to opt out. At present, mobile apps are not regulated and 40 percent do not offer a privacy policy.

In addition, Sens. Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation to require companies to get consumer consent prior to collecting location data or sharing the information with third parties.

In spite of the constant erosion of consumer privacy expectations, we will probably see more regulation in the next year. We will also see marketers working hard to obtain consent and shape public opinion regarding ad targeting. In turn, consumers – particularly young consumers – will develop a greater comfort level when they see ads that offer products that truly interest them. The tug of war between privacy and targeting will stay in flux for at least another year before we find an acceptable norm.