ANA Urges NY State Lawmakers to Reject New Restrictions on Online Behavioral Advertising

ANA has urged members of the New York State Legislature to reject two bills that would impose serious new state-specific restrictions on online behavioral advertising.  Assembly Bill 9275-B and Senate Bill 6441-B would subject all Internet advertising, wherever it originates, to a narrow and rigid set of notice, choice and security rules dealing primarily with the collection and use of non-personally identifiable information (non-PII).  These bills raise serious constitutional issues by burdening interstate commerce and could encourage other states to act, leading to a patchwork of inconsistent state laws on the collection and use of non-PII.  ANA’s letters to the Assembly and Senate committees are available here.

In addition to the letters, ANA Senior Vice President Keith Scarborough is joining several companies and other industry groups this week in Albany for a series of meetings with members of both the Assembly and the Senate.  Our message is that consumer privacy in the online world can best be protected through strong industry self-regulation, buttressed by enforcement at the national level by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  Balkanized regulation by the states, particularly of non-PII, would seriously undermine the architecture of the Internet and the financial foundation that advertising provides to many online services.    

Online behavioral advertising makes it possible for consumers to see the right ad at the right time for the right product and allows marketers to better target their messages.  Just last week, ANA and eleven other trade groups filed comments with the FTC on a proposed set of industry self-regulatory principles to govern online behavioral advertising.  We share the commitment of policymakers in the states and at the federal level to protecting the privacy of consumers online.