I picked the news that Better Advertising Acquires Ghostery via the No DPI forum. Ghostery is a very popular plugin that identifies tracking scripts on webpages, and offers the option of blocking said scripts. I'm not sure how significant this will prove to be, but I note from the Better Advertising web page that
We created Better Advertising because we knew there had to be a better way to conduct online behavioral advertising. Our goal is simple: provide solutions that help deliver the best ads and provide the best privacy, bringing transparency and trust to the online advertising ecosystem.
We do this by helping advertisers, advertising agencies, advertising networks, publishers, consumers, and industry associations to be accountable to each other and to make it clear, simple, and easy to understand how online behavioral advertising is occurring. We think improving the way data is collected, used and disclosed – and doing so in a transparent manner – will raise the quality of the entire online advertising industry. Most importantly, Better Advertising understands the importance of privacy to consumers.
Better Advertising’s technology helps online advertisers, agencies and networks continue to self-regulate. Working closely with our design partners, Better Advertising is at the vanguard of online advertising. The Better Advertising platform will enable advertisers to maximize their use of innovative digital strategies, including behavioral targeting, while meeting anticipated demand for enhanced transparency and consumer privacy.
I'm not sure that the acquisition of Ghostery by this lot is a good thing, and it's probably worth keeping an eye on the situation. The NoDPI forum also points out a bug in the current Ghostery plugin which causes Firefox to take ages to close down. This is something I've noticed lately, but not pinned down.
Powered by ScribeFire.