Should The European Online Avdertising Industry Be Introducing Labeling On All BT-Powered Ads?

There's a piece today in MarketingWeek about the OFT's report. The report points out that the online advertising industry could be doing more to "address consumer concerns over behavioural targeting". The OFT (Office of Fair Trading) has warned that unless more stringent self-regulation is introduced, it will bring in external regulation to tackle the perceived problems. This tells me two things: firstly, the privacy advocates are lobbying the OFT very hard; and two that behavioural targeting has still got a very bad name. One way around this is to introduce labelling for all BT-powered ads, giving users the opportunity to opt-out. I suggested the introduction of a similar initiative to that currently running in the US - but it should be Europe-wide so that EU legislators can also see that the industry is acting responsibility on the issue of user privacy. Interesting to see that BT-related ads only accounts for about £90 million of a total £3.3 billion spend of online ad spend.