The online advertising industry is faced with the growing problem of consumers' perceiving cookies as spyware and so deleting them; since the problem is not going to go away by itself, and advertisers themselves are unlikely to take action, it's up to publishers to solve the problem, writes Tacoda CEO Dave Morgan in MediaPost.

Consumers want the companies that track and use the data from users' online behavior to be transparent about the entire process and to have a say in it; and since publishers "are the ones with regular, recurring, and direct relationships with consumers and are the 'gatekeepers' that advertisers and their agencies pay to contact and engage those consumers," they must take the lead in resolving the problem, Morgan writes. He suggests various steps that publishers take.

First, they must provide notice and gain consent transparently, and institute policies that require full disclosure from advertisers and agencies - and then confront the inevitable resistance from them, as well as go against their own instincts to reject taking actions that could possibly undermine their revenue stream. Morgan counsels that if publishers work together, they would have the clout to succeed.

Recent Coverage: The Cookie Imbroglio

- eMarketer: Fear Not the Cookie Monster
- Jupiter: Wealthy, Web-Experienced Users Delete Cookies Most
- Making Cookies Digestible for Users
- WebTrends: Despite Net Ad Boom, Confidence in Web Metrics Shaky
- Burst Cookie Survey: Consumers 'Don't Understand, Say Maybe Useful, But Some Delete Anyhow
- Study: Quadruple the Number of Visitors Rejecting Third-Party Cookies
- Safecount Launched to Save Cookies, Back Safe Measurement
- Study: 27 Percent Weekly Clearing Cookies
- InsightExpress: Rumors of Cookie Demise Still Greatly Exaggerated
- Cookie Death Small Potatoes, More Product of Spyware Measures
- Atlas: Cookie Deletion Figures Exaggerated Wildly by Self-Reported Data
- Macromedia CTO: Yeah, Flash Makes for Good Cookie Replacements
- Cookie Death Causes Search for Successor
- Cookie Death Partly Due to 'Anti-Spyware' Tools
- Tacoda Tech Replaces Deleted Cookies
- Many Delete Cookies, Invalidate Ad Measurements
- House Removes Threat to Cookies in Spyware Bill