Digital Tablet
The European Commission has given the green light to a new telco joint venture that aims to develop a new digital advertising platform with privacy baked in.
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone Group would each take a 25 per cent stake on the new company, to be based in Belgium. It will be run by independent management, under the oversight of a shareholder-appointed supervisory board.
The plan is to create an opt-in platform to support brands' and publishers' digital marketing and advertising activities in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
"Subject to the user's consent, the joint venture will generate a unique digital code derived from the user's mobile or fixed network subscription," the Commission explains.
"Such code will allow brands and publishers to recognize users on their websites or applications on a pseudonymous basis, group them under different categories and tailor their content to specific users' groups."
The only data that's shared is a pseudo-anonymous digital token which, say the companies, can't be reverse-engineered. Users can opt in with a single click, while revoking any other pre-existing consents.
"The platform is specifically designed to offer consumers a step change in the control, transparency and protection of their data, which is currently collected, distributed and stored at scale by major, non-European players," says Vodafone, which has been leading the project.
It's been designed from the start to be compliant with European data protection policy such as GDPR and the ePrivacy directive. It's already been trialled on Vodafone’s and Deutsche Telekom’s networks in Germany, working with online publishers and advertisers under the brand TrustPid. Other trials are being considered in France and Spain to further develop the platform and the eventual aim is to make it available to any operator within Europe.
The move isn't being welcomed by all.
According to campaign groups EDRi and Access Now, while the token-based approach could limit controversial cross-site tracking, it does nothing to limit the harvesting of personal data or its use for micro-targeting by websites and apps themselves.
"TrustPid appears to be just another first-party cookie system that incentivises advertisers, websites and apps to track people’s activities and behavior themselves to micro-target them with ads. The system therefore does not change the current harmful tracking ads business," they say.
"In an attempt to compete with Apple, Google and other dominant tracking ad firms, telcos merely shift the data collection to websites and app providers and could skilfully monopolise a user identifier as part of the internet’s network infrastructure.
" The Commission has now decided that the deal won't raise any competition concerns in the region, concluding that similar services are already available and that competitors will be able to sign up to the venture or its rivals.
It will of course, though, be competing with the likes of Google and Facebook, which the EC sees as deeply problematic in terms of privacy.
