Dive Brief:

• The Federal Communications Commission passed down a new privacy ruling that requires ISPs to get opt-in from consumers before collecting data such as geographic locations, browsing history and app-usage information. 
• The ruling has a direct impact on targeted and personalized online advertising as well as data sharing and use plans by telecoms.
• The ad industry opposes the ruling, as reported by Ad Age, with the Direct Marketing Association offering the strongest rebuke to the ruling, stating it undermines the growth of the internet economy.

Dive Insight:

The ruling puts the onus on broadband service provides to collect opt-in permission to collect data that had previously been covered by opt-out standards. In practical terms for marketers, this targeted and personalized marketing through broadband service provides will likely have to rely on first-party data collected by the marketers themselves or second-party data from a trusted source that secured an opt-in, and rely less on unfiltered third-party data that has previously been collected and aggregated at higher levels.

There are positives and negatives with this approach as there will be less data to work from, and look-alike campaigns might become more difficult, but at the same time first-party data is always the strongest for personalizing down to the individual level.

The FCC first proposed the new standards earlier this month, citing the need to protect consumers' sensitive data. In a blow to industry self-regulation, the agency moved quickly to pass a ruling. 

"This is an analog decision in a digital era," said Lou Mastria, executive director, Digital Advertising Alliance, in a statement. "The FCC missed an opportunity to help consumers better understand the essential role of advertising in supporting digital media, and its decision flies in the face of the proven and effective self-regulatory model that has served consumers so well.

"By rejecting the industry's accepted definition of sensitive information, the FCC chose patchwork and inconsistent standards over common sense," he said. "General web browsing or application use information is clearly not as sensitive as financial or health information, yet this rule treats them the same,”