Who's watchin' you

In yet another hard-pressed effort to keep federal regulation at bay, a coalition of major media and marketing trade associations have issued self-regulatory principles for behavioral advertising (pdf).

The principles, drafted by American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Direct Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and Council of Better Business Bureaus, prioritize privacy and demand that marketers clearly inform users about their data-collection methods, then give them control over how they want their information used.

There are also guidelines on providing clear disclosure about data collection for the purpose of advertising, expanding the ability of users to either permit or block information collection, providing limits on how much time personal data can be held, as well as a special section regarding data collection of children.

The program itself goes into implementation at the start of 2010.

A Burst Media survey found three in five users think sites track their behavior already. And SEMPO found that behavioral targeting tops the list of "exciting" search trends.