Privacy fears hinder Net ads

Internet commerce is being held back by doubts over privacy, and will only take off when independent auditors are used to track information gleaned about online customers, writes Stuart Lauchlan.

In a keynote address at the Online Developers? Show in San Francisco this week, Kevin O?Connor, chief executive of online advertising tracking company Doubleclick, said such issues must be addressed or would continue to act as a barrier to greater exploitation of the Net as a business platform.

O?Connor claimed the potential for targeted advertising to be the most direct and global medium had only been partially realised.

It was, for example, possible to conduct psychographic profiles of user behaviour, demographic profiles and, most controversially, lifestyle profiles via the Internet.

The concern among end users about all this data collection is supposedly privacy, he observed. But O?Connor claimed that it was actually the media which was concerned about this.

O?Connor claimed that his company had only received about 50 complaints about the five million or so adverts it had handled. As long as there are clear-cut policies governing the use of collected data, there should be no problem, he insisted.

Examples of such policies include insisting that data be of practical use in ensuring that potential customers are effectively targeted with relevant advertising material; providing an opt-out facility for customers at all stages; and examination of the uses to which data is put by external auditors such as Price Waterhouse or Coopers & Lybrand.

He dismissed the idea that the Internet is an overhyped phenomenon, arguing that it is the products and suppliers that operate on the Net that are guilty of being overhyped and overhyping.

?The world has never seen a bigger medium than the Internet,? he argued.

?It beats everything that has gone before it in terms of penetration and growth.?