Digital Marketing Biz: Time to Come Clean on Privacy [Annals of False Claims about "Non-Personal Info"]

QuadrantOne is an "advanced targeting platform" owned by the New York Times, Gannett, Hearst, and the Tribune Company.  In last week's Ad Age, a NYT exec and Quadrant One board member claims that [my emphasis]:

"Private exchanges are built upon supply-side platforms such as those offered by AdMeld, Rubicon or Pubmatic. These platforms aim to be configured with feature sets that equal or exceed those in the public exchanges. They allow real-time bidding. They can apply third-party data to the transaction in a manner that is fully disclosed and consistent with industry best practices for privacy protection...publishers who have been entrusted with information from their audiences can safely apply that data for targeting purposes in a transparent, privacy-compliant manner within the private exchange without fear of data leakage to third parties."

This is clearly misleading and an example of how online marketers cling to a flimsy digital fairy tale that its data collection system is focused on so-called "non-personal information."  One of the key battlegrounds in the privacy debate is to force the Congress and the FTC to challenge these inaccurate claims.  You don't need to know someone's name anymore to understand significant details about their identity, via online tracking, profiling, and the real-time merging of First and Third party data sources.  Take a look at excerpts from the QuadrantOne media kit, on "Advanced" and "Behavioral" Targeting and ask yourself, when you are online at the sites owned by these leading journalism companies, do you know and can control all the data collected on you via a so-called "privacy-complaint manner."