The Office of Fair Trading has demanded firms using targeted and behavioural advertisements to be more lucid, or face additional action.
The regulator has been checking the targeted and behavioural advertising market since October 2009. It reported on Tuesday that “more could be done to provide consumers with better information about how personal information is collected and used”.
The regulator summoned the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), an online advertising body, to stiffen its voluntary code, saying remonstrations revolve around abuse of personal data and privacy issues.
The targeted and behavioural ad market will rise significantly in the future, the OFT said. The market is small, with projected profits from £64 million to £95 million, which is only a small part of the online ad market which has a worth of £3.3 billion.
Online behavioural advertising monitors web users and makes specific ads to the interest of users based on past visits on web pages.
A study found that 40% of web users who were polled don’t care about the issue, 28% did not want it, and 24% welcomed the decision. Concerns were alleviated when users could choose to avoid behavioural advertising.
The companies are legally required to inform the users about the function of the cookie file or other tracking programmes being installed in their computers, imposed by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
OFT is willing to cooperate with the industry players and consumers while the targeted and behavioural advertising is still not widespread, “to ensure that the market grows in a way that protects consumers from bad practise”, stated Heather Clayton, senior director of the OFT.
The IAB’s regulatory principles are supported by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.
The online privacy issue has sparked debates after Google acknowledged getting public data on its mapping project and Facebook on its online privacy settings issue.
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