MIAMI – The Association of National Advertisers is calling for “a new contract” that Facebook, Google and other digital companies should employ to regularly tell consumers what happens to the data they share online.
“How many times are we going to go through surprise after surprise after surprise,” ANA CEO Bob Liodice says in this interview with Beet.TV at the 4A’s Accelerate conference.
Liodice’s comments come as the advertising industry prepares to begin navigating the new GDPR consumer data privacy regulations in the European Union and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears before the U.S. Congress to explain the social media platform’s latest data mishaps.
According to Liodice, Facebook’s problems are related to the broader industry issue surrounding digital transparency.
“We still have not achieved a psychology that, regardless of the relationships we have, whether it’s client-agency, whether it’s client-consumer, whether its media-consumer, we have not achieved a level of transparency that we’re all comfortable with,” says Liodice.
He acknowledges that “privacy has been especially difficult,” given the fact that “most individuals have been prone to release their rights to privacy,” particularly on social media.
“We have to take a step back and create a new contract with Facebook, with YouTube, with whoever we are giving out our information to. Personally I think we need a more intensive feedback loop.”
His suggestion is that companies institute “some kind of annual reporting mechanism where Facebook or whoever provides a report to an individual that says ‘by the way these are your particular settings this is the information that we have in-house about you. Do you want to change anything.’” That would give consumers “true control about what it is that he or she wants to allow to be out in the marketplace.”
Such a “feedback loop” would also give people the choice of which of their data they wish to delete.
“To me, when we talk about putting the consumer in control, I don’t think we’re serious about it and I don’t think we’ve worked hard enough at it,” says Liodice. “So I think that’s an important step for us to make. And that is a total contract that we have to make across the entire ecosystem.”
This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts, It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
