Dive Brief:
- Congress might have created a storm of support for consumer data after voting to loosen internet privacy protections that ISPs — including major corporations like AT&T and Verizon — must meet but reporting by Bloomberg predicts the looming debate over net neutrality will be a bigger policy issue.
- A bill overturning privacy protections recently passed both the Senate and the House and is expected to be signed by President Trump. A number of privacy advocates have been speaking out against the bill, which would allows ISPs to collect and sell consumer data without an opt-in, instead requiring consumers to specifically opt-out of having their data collected.
- Both issues have come to a head after the election of Donald Trump and the remaking of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), specifically the advancement of Ajit Pai to chair of the commission. Pai and Republican colleagues had been highly critical of moves by the outgoing chairman under Obama, Tom Wheeler, who put into place more stringent privacy and net neutrality rules.
Dive Insight:
Marketers tend to cheer moves such as the likely privacy roll-back because data collected closer to the source such as the online activity data available to ISPs is more valuable for targeting, measurement and other data-driven marketing activities. The danger is the more consumers become aware of when and how their data is collected, the more likely they are to take actions to prevent this, such as the relatively simple move of installing ad blocking software. Consumers could also take the time to opt-out of data sharing via required privacy policies or take the even more extreme move of utilizing a virtual private network (VPN) to completely hide their online activity. All of these moves by consumers have some impact on digital marketing effectiveness.
Net neutrality is based on ISPs having to treat all internet traffic equally regardless of the source. Net neutrality opponents would like to allow ISPs to force businesses like Netflix to pay extra or have their traffic slowed over the ISP’s pipelines. With AT&T, Verizon and others ramping up their own digital content strategies, rolling back net neutrality could give ISPs' over-the-top video services an advantage over Netflix, Amazon Prime and others.
Current net neutrality rules have been rendered ineffective because the FCC isn’t enforcing them including dropping existing investigations of violations. What is to be seen is if Congress and the FCC are willing to go further and fully dismantle the rules. Most insiders seem to agree that will be the case to some extent. Given how contentious the net neutrality debate has been for years already, along with the backlash on the privacy move, everyone should expect another political firestorm once net neutrality becomes a front page news item again.
