I-level Goes Into Administration; US Lawmakers Unveil Draft Privacy Legislation

» Independent digital media agency has been put into administration. The ten year old agency, which currently employs about one hundred and twenty staff, announced the news yesterday. I-level lost the lucrative COI account this year to GroupM, which accounted for 40% of its business. The company is also carrying a significant amount of debt, around £32 million, on its balance sheet after a private equity buyout in 2008. The cost of servicing that debt is about £3 million per year. Combined with the 15% fall in revenue last year and the loss of an account worth about £40 million in billings, the agency could not be run as a viable commercial operation. The company is now looking for a buyer, but who will buy I=level? One of the frontrunners perhaps would be WPP. Martin Sorrell did tell investors recently that WPP was in the market for digital agencies, and could pony up the cash to buy the agency. But there will be no big earn-outs for the private equity firm who bought I-level. This would be a fire sale. [Brand Republic]

» US legislators unveiled a draft privacy legislation that will require ad networks to get a user’s consent before using their data. The proposal looks to have come up with a sensible proposal to give users access to the data being used by ad networks. There will be no opt-in process. Instead ads powered by behavioural targeting will have clearly identifiable icons. The user will then be able to click through and opt-out of being targeted by the ad network. The EU could do with looking at how US lawmakers are dealing with this issue. The proposed legislation not only helps protect user privacy, but also ensures the online ad industry becomes more accountable with the way it targets users with ads. The EU would be doing the digital media industry here a major commercial disservice if it was to insist on an opt-in for every site dropping a cookie. That wouldn’t just affect sites running pixels from ad nets, it would affect hundreds of thousands of European sites using adsense, analytics software and any other cookie-powered publisher applications. How could any online business survive without these tools? [MediaPost]