Advocacy Groups File Complaints With FTC About Mobile Marketing

So called 'behavioral targeting' is bad enough on the PC web.

But on the mobile web?

Well, forget about it, say two leading privacy groups who filed complains with the Federal Trade Commission today.

"We're filing a complaint to force the FTC to take a proactive stance," Jeff Chester, founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, told MediaPost today. Mobile ad companies "incorporate the same problematic business practices that we witnessed with PC-based broadband marketing, including behavioral targeting and profiling techniques - except that this time they know your location," he said, referring to location-based marketing that, say, sends you an ad or coupon when you pass a particular store.

His group is joining U.S. Public Interest Research Group in the complaint. Together they hope to push the FTC to craft a marketing regime that gives priority to privacy, including special rules regulating mobile ads to children and teens.

As the pub puts it, for marketers, the ability to send an ad to someone as he passes by the shop is an obvious boon, but consumer groups worry that it's potentially intrusive.

"Privacy advocates are concerned that it could be misused," D. Reed Freeman, a partner with the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren and a former staff attorney in the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, tells the pub. "It's the 'Minority Report' paranoia," he said. In the dystopian "Minority Report," Tom Cruise's character faces sales pitches from talking billboards.

Indeed, in BRANDING UNBOUND the book, in a chapter called "The Future According to Spielberg," I look at how that dystopian view is exactly what futurists who helped shape "Minority Report" project based on trends in ubiquitous mobile connectivity.

As I say in the book, mobile marketing can be a tremendously powerful way to enhance the way consumers interact with, and experience, the brands they know and trust. But that last word - trust - is indeed the operative word. The more we create compelling experiences that earn our consumers' trust and respect, the more success we will find as the mobile age progresses.

Mobile marketing is about brands empowering people to enhance the way they live, work, learn and play. It is not the subjugation of consumer interests just to meet our profit goals.

Without that mindset, mobile will indeed herald in a "Minority Report" like future - with advocacy groups like  CDD and  U.S. PIRP sounding the alarm.

To read the MediaPost piece, click here. And NPR's Marketplace has a report on the effort, here.

For more on the book, click here.

Quick Links:

BRANDING UNBOUND The Blog
BRANDING UNBOUND The Book
ADWEEK Magazines Excerpt
Rick Mathieson.com

Comments

[Eric Holmen]

In light of the complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission on 6th May by the Center for Digital Democracy and the US Public Interest Research Group, we at SmartReply wish to express our support of both advocacy groups in their effort to safeguard Americans’ privacy rights in the realm of mobile marketing. As a leading provider of mobile marketing services to many of the nation’s leading retailers and brands, we have unwaveringly advocated for respectful and unintrusive mobile communications. As mobile technology continues to evolve, it will be vital for companies and oversight entities like the FTC to work in conjunction, to preserve the privacy of ordinary citizens.

We agree with Mr. Chester’s assertion that the FTC must take a proactive stance to stave off dubiously ethical practices, particularly as mobile marketing represents a highly personal method of reaching target audiences. We acknowledge, however, that this personalized communication is the very aspect of the medium that makes it so effective from a marketing standpoint. We might also point out that the goal of regulation should not be to squelch all marketing or advertising messaging, but rather to ensure that it is consistently welcome and invited, and that it provides value and service to consumers.

As such, we support the current FTC opt-in requirement for mobile messaging, and would support any initiatives that build on that policy. People should be required to opt-in to mobile programs, but we believe the opt-in process should remain simple (a yes text from a consumer) so as not to place undue burden on either the company or the consumer. Since the technology will continue to mature and expand, it doesn't make sense that a consumer would have to first opt-in to get a text message, then opt-in to share their personally identifiable information, then opt-in to share location-based data, then opt-in to use commerce features, etc. Of equal if not greater importance, the ability to opt-out should also be swift, complete and painless.

If the FTC applies its current standards – the opt-in requirements in particular - to emerging segments of the mobile market (including campaigns that capitalize on location awareness), we believe that mobile marketing will continue to be a welcome, effective and potentially rewarding avenue of communication between consumers and the companies that serve them.

Eric Holmen, President
SmartReply Inc, Irvine, CA