Commentary
An Open Letter To The Online Publishers Association
- by Alan Chapell , Op-Ed Contributor, July 17, 2014
Recently, Jason Kint of the Online Publishers Association wrote an op-ed on Do Not Track. In an attempt
to paint the OPA as a leader in privacy and Do Not Track initiatives, Mr. Kint accused members of the third-party advertising technology community of “stonewalling the development of a ‘Do
Not …
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The DNT signal is still the only W3C agreed way to transparently signal a person's disagreement (or consent) to tracking across domains. It is true that the TPWG has been led astray by the silly first-party/third-party role distinction and this has hindered getting to consensus on compliance, but the distinction will be meaningless in Europe anyway. EU DP law is about controllers, processors and subjects, so any tracking consent signal must apply to controller's web domains whatever the technical role they assume when accessed. The e-privacy Directive neatly covers the possibility of implied consent to web-sites with the "strictly necessary" formulation in Article 5(3), and in addition any first-party login would not need a DNT exception as long as it incorporated informed consent (an authentication cookie could be taken as out-of-band consent).
The OPA should also consider that their openly biased approach risks alienating their client base (marketers and their agencies) who rely on third party measurement for targeting insights - so that they can effectively place advertising on OPA member sites.