The Alphabet Soup wakes up, too late.

It appears that after months/years of sitting quietly by and watching privacy advocates claim the moral high ground on consumer’s “right” to privacy, the IAB, DAA, and ANA have finally started to push back. I suppose technically that’s good news, but if you look at how they’re doing it, I’m guessing this is going to quickly turn to bad news.

The triggering event for this was Mozilla saying they are now officially going to start blocking third party cookies, where consumers who have not opted in are not going to be subjected to advertisements that are normally part of a retargeting effort. Keep in mind there was extensive foreshadowing of this; Gary Kovacs (CEO of Mozilla) addressed this very issue over a year ago (see my post dated 3.9.13—below), and there was zero ambiguity as to where he stood and where he was going. It has taken these organizations this long to craft a “coherent” response, despite knowing full well what was going on and what the potential consequences of inaction were likely to be.

So if they’re responding, what’s the bad news? Look at how they respond. They whine about the threat to their business model, how its not fair, blah, blah, blah. This is EXACTLY the wrong approach. The privacy advocates have done a textbook job of FUD marketing; their message is aimed at consumers—who do not understand the nuances and details of behavioral targeting and third party cookies, can’t be bothered to find out, and are easily stampeded. Now that they have that herd headed over a cliff, the privatistas are now going after easier and bigger prey: politicians. As I have said before, politicians are neither businessmen nor technologists, yet they determine policy and governance on the business of technology. They pander to the loudest voice, and right now the only ones yelling in terms the politicians understand are the privacy advocates.

So what needs to happen? These groups need to sell the benefits of targeted advertising to the consumers who are enjoying the benefits of unlimited information and entertainment. I mean, hell, this is the advertising business, are they not able to convince people of something? They do this all day every day for all sorts of products, then when it actually matters to their long term survival, they freeze up then react in the exact opposite way they should.

The current business model of the internet is built on advertising; Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc. all make zillions based on advertising. This is a given. Again, the question is, do consumers want relevancy or spam? Because that is what its going to boil down to.

The IAB, ANA, DAA, etc. need to stop feeling sorry for themselves and start selling the value of behavioral targeting, and do it now.