|
|
ARCHIVED CONTENT
You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.Editor’s Note: Doc Searls is a widely read blogger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and author of The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. In this short article, he offers a forceful overview of the impact of the GDPR on advertising-centric tracking technologies and practices.
Extract from article by Doc Searls
In The Big Short, investor Michael Burry says “One hallmark of mania is the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud.” (Burry shorted the mania- and fraud-filled subprime mortgage market and made a mint in the process.)
One would be equally smart to bet against the mania for the tracking-based form of advertising called adtech.
Since tracking people took off in the late ’00s, adtech has grown to become a four-dimensional shell game played by hundreds (or, if you include martech, thousands) of companies, none of which can see the whole mess, or can control the fraud, malware and other forms of bad acting that thrive in the midst of it.
And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. The fact that it can be done is no excuse. Nor is the monstrous sum of money made by it.
Without adtech, the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) would never have happened. But the GDPR did happen, and as a result websites all over the world are suddenly posting notices about their changed privacy policies, use of cookies, and opt-in choices for “relevant” or “interest-based” (translation: tracking-based) advertising. Email lists are doing the same kinds of things.
“Sunrise day” for the GDPR is 25 May. That’s when the EU can start smacking fines on violators.
Simply put, your site or service is a violator if it extracts or processes personal data without personal permission. Real permission, that is. You know, where you specifically say “Hell yeah, I wanna be tracked everywhere.”
Of course what I just said greatly simplifies what the GDPR actually utters, in bureaucratic legalese. The GDPR is also full of loopholes only snakes can thread; but the spirit of the law is clear, and the snakes will be easy to shame, even if they don’t get fined. (And legitimate interest—an actual loophole in the GDPR, may prove hard to claim.)
Toward the aftermath, the main question is What will be left of advertising—and what it supports—after the adtech bubble pops?
Read the complete article at GDPR will pop the adtech bubble
