This article talks about how DAA, Digital Advertising
Alliance, helps developing policy and regulation of internet-based advertising. DAA is a self-regulatory program that provides
protection and information for consumers of what kind of ads they are served.
This program is still in early stage since many significant companies have not involved
yet. However, it does show great success so far and government has supported
this program.
1.
Do you think the online ads should be regulated?
If so, how should we regulate it?
2.
Do you think government should set rules or regulations
for online ads?
3.
Tell us what is your experience of online ads? Pleasant
or unpleasant?
First of all, this was an opinion piece made by a lobbyist for the DAA. Secondly, the author, Nancy Hill must be a twit. Let’s look at her three silly points:
ReplyDelete1. “Companies don't want arbitrary laws and regulations.” Other than people suffering from varied obsessive compulsive disorders, is there anyone else or anything else that could possibly want ARBITRARY laws and regulations?
2. “Marketers and agencies are in a better position to adapt to self-regulation for online advertising because we're at the front lines of evolving tech issues.” Besides “marketers” and “agencies,” who else produces and runs ads? Who else could possibly SELF-regulate “marketers” and “agencies” other than “marketers” and “agencies”??
Why does Hill use a war metaphor, “front lines,” to describe a relationship to “tech issues”? What are “marketers” and “agencies” fighting against, technology? War can so often be unpredictable. It seems to me that if “marketers” and “agencies” were at war with the technology they are using, then they could possibly loose. So, wouldn’t they benefit from some help and regulation?
As for Hill's other fragmented idea of an argument that implies all “marketers” and “agencies” are so high-tech that no other entity could understand how to regulate them, is just silly. In fact, if that argument were believable, then it screams for regulation because those with so much “high-tech” power can easily be corrupted by it.
3. “The web is trust-based.” In terms of trust, how is the web different than any other advertisement media? Could idiots have been making this same argument a hundred years ago that telephone lines were trust-based?
As for Chi’s questions, my answers:
1. I think online ads should be regulated in as much as offline ads are: they should be truthful, not directly attack competitors, be ethical, be properly identified/labeled. Further, online ads should have additional restrictions about the data collected providing consumers a reasonable expectation of privacy. The data shouldn’t live forever and be shared around the planet (I don’t know what the line is here). But imagine: you click on a hypertension medicine ad, then your life insurance company calls wanting to renegotiate rates.
2. yes, it should be by government. I feel that government is less corruptible and more predictable -as a whole- when compared to businesses, as a whole. [I'm not naive here, please don't flame me.]
3. As I mentioned in class, I truly have had almost no experience with online webpage ads in at least 7 or 8 years because I use the Ad Block Plus addon available in Firefox and Chrome. http://adblockplus.org/en/
Before Ad Block Plus, I would disable Flash (through a register hack) because years ago, it was pretty much only used by ads...all that dancing baloney would annoy me to no end making it impossible for my pea-brain to focus on whatever I was trying to read.
(Sorry for the Gankofskie-length post ;-)
This is an interesting article and touches on political views around governmental regulation and it's place in business.
ReplyDeleteI think it's best for the industry itself to take a stab at regulation and if they fail to protect consumers, then the gov't can step in.
If this association can offer "opt-in/opt-out" choices for consumers browsing the web, that would be great:
"The DAA is moving to collaborate with the World Wide Web Consortium to integrate browser-based privacy controls as yet another consumer-choice method under the alliance's framework."
That said, most industries have a poor track record at self-regulation - look at Wall Street.