“People who intend to get this [monitoring of ads] right and have a vested interest in getting this right need to come together and support each other. Because, as you said, this [privacy-invasive advertising] is a planet-scale problem, and I don’t think anyone individually with their mandate has addressed it,” said Manisha Kapoor, CEO of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), during the keynote address for PrivacyNama’s virtual workshop on privacy-preserving advertising on October 11.
After two days of vibrant discussions on data sharing and protection practices by government and private entities alike, the third day of the virtual conference looked at understanding the importance of privacy-preserving advertising and technical solutions to enable it. Kapoor talked with Nikhil Pahwa, Founder and Editor at MediaNama, about the role of informed consent and the benefits of instilling privacy-protecting practices for both consumers and advertisers.
MediaNama is hosting these discussions with support from Mozilla, Meta, Walmart, Amazon, the Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi, Access Now, the Centre for Internet and Society, and the Advertising Standards Council of India.
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Informed Consent Can Be Overwhelming for Consumers
Pointing out that there are consumer benefits when businesses responsibly collect data, Kapoor stressed the need to promote informed consent. The practice ensures that a consumer gets desirable advertising messages from preferred stores or platforms while keeping unnecessary ‘spam’ at bay.
“The challenge with informed consent is that we now have a lot of organizations that are giving [us] too much information,” she said.
For example, in the case of jargon-laden terms and conditions, an ordinary consumer usually skips reading the document and blindly agrees to a privacy policy without understanding how their data will be used. Kapoor said that this has become a “point of friction”, in that an individual is made to read pages of documents just to learn about how their data will be used by the business.
When Pahwa asked whether the solution to this friction comes from regulation or technology, the ASCI CEO said that both have a role to play. Even when regulatory solutions exist, technology will be required to monitor or prevent misleading advertisements.
“We’ve [ASCI] had to deploy artificial intelligence-based systems. So, I don’t think that there is any getting away from technology as a means to solve some of the problems that perhaps have been created by technology in the first place,” said Kapoor.
Another issue is the use of dark patterns wherein a person selects ‘I agree’ without realising that there are more options available in tiny print which the individual may prefer. Practices like these indicate that shareholder value is sought to be derived at the expense of consumer value and experience.
“These are small patterns that are used in UI/UX designs, which are called dark patterns and have been a matter of study for a few years now,” said Kapoor.
Instead of such practices, Kapoor recommended that businesses make an effort to highlight all such options prominently. Such measures also address the issue of information asymmetry between the consumer and the organizations seeking their data.
Ensuring Privacy Benefits Businesses and Consumers
Kapoor said that in the long run, advertisers will lose consumers if they destroy too much consumer value. Individuals move away from websites that ask for a lot of data or are rumoured to misuse collected data. Aside from increasing the cost of business, destroying consumer experience also invites a disproportionate amount of regulatory scrutiny, she said.
“If your business model, communication model, or acquisition model was built on some of these unfair practices of acquiring data from consumers, either consumers will turn away themselves as they get more educated, or regulation will clamp down on,” she said.
As a long-term plan, Kapoor advised privacy-preserving advertising as a more sustainable way of doing business and of engaging with consumers. While doing this, she encouraged businesses to ask questions like ‘How to ask for consent? How to make sure that the information given is not overwhelming? How to not suppress choices and present choices that are consumer-preferred choices as well? How to transparently share what the data will be used for?’
“Those are the kinds of issues that make it fair for consumers to interact with advertising [services],” she said.
While agreeing with Pahwa that advertisers will always be interested in beneficial mechanisms like targeting and profiling, she distinguished the two exercises from spamming needs. Spamming focuses on stakeholder value but compromises consumer value and loyalty, said Kapoor. This again increases the costs of business.
“Advertisers, particularly the ones who want to get it right and who believe that their brand has a long-term play, need to actively come and say [or ask] ‘what is the line that we are crossing over here, and can we stay within the bounds of it?’. Someone else will come and do it if you don’t do it,” said Kapoor.
Collective Efforts Can Help Monitor Advertising Globally
Kapoor agreed with Pahwa that it is difficult to identify who the advertiser is and where the advertisement is going. She gave the example of ASCI’s recent efforts to look at ‘influencers’ as a category.
“There are challenges in terms of how to identify whether a piece of communication is an ad or not. The lines between content and advertising, they’re just so blurry right now. I think the key thing is constantly looking out for options in technologies that will help us to monitor this better,” she said.
Further, she pointed out that advertisements too are “morphing character” at all points in time. Aside from the shift of ads from print and TV to the digital space, the formats seen in digital advertising are also morphing regularly. To address this challenge at a “planetary scale,” she advised all stakeholders to come together and support each other rather than undertake individual attempts.
When asked about regulatory frustrations, Kapoor advised considering shifting from regulation or self-regulation of ads upon publication or post-publication, to regulation at the point of creation and planning. Here, she stressed the need for a global education effort that considers how to educate people about the rules, and encourages them to get privacy-preserving advertising right.
“I will go to one of my favourite examples, traffic rules. Regulators can’t be the cops standing on the other side of the signal waiting to catch you. We have to put in a disproportionate effort on educating you about traffic rules, and why they are necessary and why it’s important for everyone’s safety, that the entire ecosystem gains, when you have rules that are followed,” she said.
When Pahwa asked whether transparency in how a company got certain data could answer these concerns, Kapoor said that it’s a great mandate when looking at data as an asset. Otherwise, she said that people are left with calls and messages about all kinds of things that they don’t need in their life.
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