7th May 2008
Media Week
NO - Nick Suckley, Founder, Agenda 21
OIX is one of several interesting behavioural ad technology offerings. I don’t see any problem using people’s anonymous habits to deliver them more relevant advertising. However, as a consumer, I don’t think we realise how easy it is to join up the various bits of data we all leave behind and how detailed a picture it can build up. The hysteria about Phorm is completely missing the point.
YES - Mark Tomblin, Head of strategy, TBG London
This issue highlights the fact some marketing folk don’t understand that privacy is a principle, not an inconvenience. How the OIX user information is stored is irrelevant - it’s how it is acquired in the first place that is the key. This means that OIX has to be an opt-in system. But if it is, that could ruin its business model. This would be bad news for them, but we have to look at the bigger privacy picture here.
YES - Barney Farmer, UK sales director, Nielsen Online
Phorm says its OIX system will not store personal data and that it’s impossible to reverse engineer browsing activity to find the person. AOL made similar claims after publishing search terms, which were tracked back to the people who entered them. It’s hard to see how Phorm’s system is anonymous and works. If it didn’t collect personal data, it couldn’t personalise ads. Once you have personal data, you have the person too.
NO - Phil Jones, Assistant commissioner, Information Commissioner’s Office
We have had discussions with Phorm. It assures us its system does not allow the retention of profiles of sites visited and ads presented, and that it holds no personally identifiable information on users. It is only by allowing its technology to be subject to scrutiny by independent technical experts that it will be able to prove its assertions regarding privacy.
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