With its all-important search partnership with Google awaiting regulatory clearance, Yahoo really needs to keep its nose clean on Capitol Hill right now.
That’s probably one reason it has just pre-announced a new opt-out so that users of Yahoo services can request not to be on the receiving end of targeted advertising (it won’t actually go into effect until later this month.)
Behavioural targeting has been getting the third degree in Washington this year. The latest: John Dingell, chairman the House energy and commerce committee, wrote to internet companies last week asking for more information about their practices in this area.
Yahoo’s promise of an opt-out is included in its response to Dingell. It could hardly have done less. It already lets visitors to third-party sites that carry its advertising opt out of targeting, so extending this to Yahoo-owned properties was a must. Also, the industry’s own new draft code of conduct calls for this.
Purists will complain that none of this is enough. Yahoo will still plant cookies and collect data, even if it doesn’t use the information for behavioural targeting purposes. Also, how many users will bother to click through to the company’s privacy policy to search for an opt-out?
But it’s hard to point to real consumer harm here – and for people who actually like to look at ads (don’t count me among them) Yahoo has a point when it claims there are significant benefits from behavioural targeting. The likelihood is that all of this will eventually blow over in Washington with no meaningful changes. And the Yahoo/Google alliance? That could be more problematic.
