vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/1941487.1941498
economic and
Business Dimensions
online advertising, Behavioral
targeting, and Privacy

Studying how privacy regulation might impact
economic activity on the advertising-supported Internet.

IlluS Tra TIon By GlueKI T

Data on the online behavior of consumers has allowed companies to deliver online advertising in an extraor- dinarily precise fashion. For example, a Lexus dealership can target advertising so that its ads are shown only to people who have been recently browsing high-end cars on auto Web sites. Such behavioral targeting has obvious benefits to advertisers because fewer ad impressions are wasted. Instead, advertisers focus their resources on the consumers most likely to be influenced by the ads. For consumers, however, ads that are behaviorally targeted can appear unauthorized and even creepy. As a result there have been calls in the U.S. and elsewhere for new regulation to restrict the collection and use of online data for advertising purposes.

Unfortunately, there has been little empirical evidence about the consequences of such regulation for the future of advertisers and Web publishers