It is no secret that new privacy laws and regulations are hot-button issues these days, particularly where behavioral advertising is concerned. The significant changes that have been expected to emerge this year were “kicked-off” in February by the introduction of the “Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011” – a bill that attempts to impose yet another regulatory burden on eCommerce.

Aimed at giving consumers the ability to prevent their online activities from being followed by advertisers, the proposed legislation would direct the Federal Trade Commission to develop standards and provide enforcement for the Internet “do-not-track” mechanism. Online advertisers and marketers would be required to respect a consumer’s choice, the failure to do so would be considered an unlawful unfair or deceptive act.

Lobbyists and supports of the overly-broad bill are clearly not seeing the big picture or the consequences that may harm the very consumers that the bill seeks to protect. After all, free online content is supported by timely and relevant advertisements that actually improve a consumer’s experience. Non-targeted ads simply may not generate sufficient revenue to ensure the continued supply of content.

So, in anticipation of possible prescriptive regulatory reform, what self-regulatory best practices should those in the online advertising sector implement?

For those that collect data that can reasonably be linked to a specific consumer, computer, or other device, substantive privacy and security safeguards should be incorporated into everyday business practices.

If consumer information is retained, reasonable protections should be employed to prevent unauthorized disclosure. Further, only consumer information that is reasonably necessary to fulfill a specific, legitimate business need should be collected. Collection methods should also be more clearly and conspicuously revealed in privacy policies.

Reasonable and sound data retention periods should also be implemented and should be based upon legitimate business requirements. Location based data, increasingly common in the mobile device community, is a perfect example for which long term retention presents significant consumer privacy concerns.

Finally, reasonable steps should be taken to ensure the accuracy of collected data, particularly if such data could be used to deny consumers benefits or cause significant harm.

Consumers should be given a choice regarding what they do or do not want in terms of behavioral tracking. Increased transparency, in the form of reasonable access to what information is being collected and how it is being used should be made easily available for consumers. A conspicuous choice mechanism to opt-out of having certain types of information collected, used or shared should also be provided.

Not only will this serve to mitigate fears by placing consumers in control of their information, but it can go a long way in enhancing consumer trust while avoiding potential government investigations, fines and costly litigation.

Richard Newman is an Internet Lawyer and a Partner at Hinch Newman LLP – HinchNewman.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 14 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/52425616/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-14

FeedFront issue 14 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2011/04

Affiliate marketing is an industry based on trust. We, as affiliates, need to trust that advertisers and affiliate networks are treating us fairly. My advice to you is to trust no one. Make all of your decisions based on hard data.

All too often, affiliates start to suspect that something is wrong with the offer they are promoting. Conversion rates start at 20%, then after a week fall to 5%. Why would that be? Is it scrubbing, shaving or is the offer not tracking properly?

Forums such as WickedFire are littered with these types of threads.

If you contact the network to complain about the drop in conversion rate they will often say “the offer is tracking fine.” And that’s it.

There is a simple test that you can perform to see if you’re getting ripped off. Collect the leads YOURSELF!

Let’s say you are running a lead generation offer:

1) Take a screenshot of the advertiser’s landing page.
2) Pop a form on it that looks like the advertisers original form.
3) Turn your traffic on and collect any leads that come through.
4) Compare conversions against the stats you have collected on the affiliate network.

Is there a huge discrepancy between the conversion rate of the offer and the conversion rate of the identical page you control? If so, then it’s time to contact the affiliate network and show some proof.

The affiliate network may or may not care; it depends whom you’re dealing with. If you can’t get an amicable resolution or answer as to the discrepancy in conversion rates, you can collect the information yourself and monetize it privately.

If affiliates are willing to test ads, landing pages, offers and more, we should also be performing tests to make sure that the advertiser or network is not blatantly stealing from us. We, as affiliates, should no longer accept any form of shaving or stealing our leads.

For an industry based on trust, there are an awful lot of untrustworthy companies operating in it.

Ad Hustler has been advertising online for more than 7 years, and you can read his case studies at www.adhustler.com

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

Imagine the following scenario… You open up your cellular telephone bill and you have been charged an astonishing $10,000 for last month’s activity. Convinced that there must be an error, you contact customer service to question the charges.

When you request a copy of the calls made to achieve those charges, the customer service representative tells you they cannot make that available to you because it would compromise the security of their platform.

What?! Sound hard to believe?

Unfortunately, incidents like this occur quite regularly in the pay per click industry.

Customers who once wholeheartedly put their faith in online advertising are beginning to question the integrity of a system riddled with fraud, corruption and corporate spin experts.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the pay per click model is prone to illicit monetization opportunities that often are very difficult to detect or stop. Over the past few years, a prosperous underground click-fraud community has arisen where members are compensated to click on the advertisements of other members Web sites.

These “paid to read” or “paid to click” rings are comprised of tens of thousands of members who earn income for fraudulently clicking on advertisements.

In many instances, participants from Virginia to Bangladesh speak of earning as little as $10 to several thousand per month. This is income they could never have earned if the pay per click search engines were as successful at stopping click fraud as they claim.

The crux of the matter lies in the huge discrepancies between private click fraud companies and the pay per click search engines themselves.

For example, Click Forensics, a leading click fraud monitoring platform, routinely reports a pay per click fraud rate in between 16-27 percent. Google, on the other hand, claims that the actual level is closer to .2 percent.

When you stop and ponder the fact that Google generated $17 billion dollars in profits over the last twelve months, you can certainly understand how a 16 percent fraud rate would be enough to rattle the foundations of e-commerce online.

Somebody’s got some serious ‘splainin to do!

A few years ago, Google dropped a lawsuit and settled out of court with a leading developer of a ‘clickbot.’ These clickbots are software designed to hide and rotate a computer’s specific numerical identification, or IP address.

The unique characteristic of a clickbot is that it can space clicks minutes apart to make them appear much less conspicuous. Observers of the case reasoned that settling it kept the embarrassing news off the front pages and out of sight of online advertisers.

The question I ask is: Where is the outrage?

I cannot think of another industry where such an illicit wealth transfer can occur so quickly and undetected.

How large is the global market for evil? If this issue continues unresolved, I can assure you that the pay per click model will be replaced by something less prone to fraud, corruption and spin.

Harald Anderson is a passionate pay per click marketing expert and the Director of Search Engine Marketing at Clickbooth.com.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 4 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue4.pdf
FeedFront issue 4 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-4/