Is the FTC getting superpowers?

I know, I know. At TruEffect we like to talk about online consumer privacy – a LOT. We’ve talked, sometimes ad nauseam, about the Federal Trade Commission’s Staff Report on Behavioral Advertising, and have closely followed the debate on the state of industry self-regulation.  While the FTC’s report is quite clear, the industry has largely disagreed with the positions posited by the FTC, and ignored their not-so-thinly veiled threats of government regulation – believing that the industry can certainly regulate itself long before a need arises for the government to do it for us. Well, it’s not that we take pride in saying, “I told you so,” but……

Yesterday Wendy Davis from MediaPost wrote about the online industry having their panties in a bunch around the new legislation before Congress that will make it much easier for the FTC to create rules and bring civil law suits. She writes “The current House version creates a new consumer protection commission while also beefing up the FTC's power in a few key ways. The bill removes administrative hurdles to the FTC's rulemaking ability, makes it easier for the agency to pursue civil litigation, and allows the FTC to target ad companies that aid and abet unfair practices.”

And if you want to know what the FTC considers unfair practices, you need only to read their aforementioned “Self-regulatory principles on behavioral advertising.”  I keep remembering FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz’s comment, “A day of reckoning may be fast approaching.” If the IAB feels the need to lobby against this current legislation, does that mean self-regulation has failed? Will third-party data models like those used by behavioral targeting companies and third-party ad servers be at risk?

– Layne Salter