Canadian reaction to the conundrum of DoubleClick – the New York-based Internet advertising firm that was forced to backtrack on its plans to provide marketers with the names of anonymous Web surfers – has been swift and unequivocal. What the company was proposing was wrong, say industry representatives, and would have backfired eventually.
John Gustavson, president of the Canadian Marketing Association, says Canadian consumers are already concerned about their privacy and security on the Net, and DoubleClick’s proposal to link online movements to a massive consumer database only exacerbates the problem.
‘It’s the sort of thing that does nothing to help e-commerce, acts as an impediment to its growth, and can lead to restrictive legislation.
‘If you want to sell somebody something, you have to make them feel comfortable,’ he adds. ‘And that means it is in your own best interest to make your privacy policy highly visible.’
Nancy Lee Jobin, president of Graffiti Direct & Promotion in Toronto, adds that profiling itself is a useful and respected business practice – provided the consumer understands it’s being done.
‘Profiling goes on in many industries, and if people know they are being profiled, it’s OK,’ she says. ‘But opting in (giving permission) has to be the way to go.’
David Jones, president of Electronic Frontier Canada in Kitchener, Ont., says that what made DoubleClick’s practice especially dubious is that it went on without the consumer being aware of it. ‘There is not the usual knowledge and consent you should have when someone is collecting personal information,’ he says. ‘This is one of the reasons why the Canadian government is going to pass Bill C-6 (privacy legislation designed to protect personal information collected during the course of e-commerce activities).’
George Gonzo, sales and marketing manager for Calgary-based CyberSurf – one of a handful of Internet service providers (ISPs) that offer free Internet access to their subscribers in return for the customer’s permission to market to them – took a dim view of DoubleClick’s practices.
‘We believe an individual’s privacy is sacrosanct,’ he says.
CyberSurf’s customers register by filling out a 30-question survey. The data is aggregated according to demographics. Marketers send messages on that basis – not based on individual responses.
‘We think that’s a pretty fair trade-off,’ adds Gonzo. ‘If [the consumer doesn’t] agree with someone’s practices, eventually the clock will run out on them. People will cancel their accounts or move their business elsewhere.’
In a keynote address at Strategy’s recent Online to Profit conference, Nathan Estruth of Procter & Gamble’s I-Ventures unit said all marketers should take DoubleClick’s recent comeuppance as a warning.
‘The consumer is in charge,’ he said. ‘They dictate how and where we use their data. That is not the mind-set we are used to dealing with. We need to build a new kind of trust with consumers and regulators where the consumer allows us to enter their world and remember information for them, not about them.
‘If we don’t go there, the week that (DoubleClick CEO) Kevin O’Connor had last week is soon coming upon us.’
In the face of mounting pressure from privacy advocates and legal experts, O’Connor last week issued a public statement, saying: ‘It is clear…that I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards.’