Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

With behavioral targeting being considered one of the keys to advertising success and relevancy, companies and agencies have been ramping up efforts to get the type of information that will make marketing efforts of more interest to consumers.

Of course along with that comes concerns over privacy. To that end, the FTC has released a set of guidelines companies can use to alleviate consumer concerns, while also offering them products and services they'll have a genuine interest in viewing or reading.

Here's what they suggest:

Concerning the need for greater transparency and consumer control regarding privacy issues:

Every Web site where data is collected for behavioral advertising should provide a clear, consumer-friendly, and prominent statement that data is being collected to provide ads targeted to the consumer and give consumers the ability to choose whether or not to have their information collected for such purpose.

For concerns that data collected may end up with criminals, and the length of time firms are keeping consumer data:

Any company that collects or stores consumer data for behavioral advertising should provide reasonable security for that data and should retain data only as long as is necessary to fulfill a legitimate business or law enforcement need.

To tackle the problem that consumers may not keep their privacy promises:

Companies should obtain affirmative express consent from affected consumers before using data in a manner materially different from promises the company made when it collected the data.

For concerns over sensitive data:

Companies should only collect sensitive data for behavioral advertising if they obtain affirmative express consent from the consumer to receive such advertising.

The FTC added that they would like consumers or others to give their input on what they consider sensitive data, to give everyone involved an idea on what concerns them.

To me this is the least us marketers can do. The message behind this message, is if we don't self-regulate, they'll do their own regulating. It's better for us to do it than those that may not understand the entire marketing field, and so could unintentionally harm the industry; something government interference in business is prone to do.