‘Weak Sauce’: New industry tool for opt-out from email-based tracking misses ID tech and key players like Facebook and Liveramp

The email address has become an increasingly important piece of information used to identify people for advertising, particularly as the efficacy of cookies and other tracking tech declines.

Now, the Network Advertising Initiative has introduced a new way for people to opt-out from ad targeting and tracking that employs email matching. However, while the industry group’s new privacy control is intended to stop email-based audience matching — often referred to as onboarding — it does not work for email matching done by some of the biggest purveyors of those services: Facebook and LiveRamp. Meanwhile, there are other gaps and questions about how the opt-outs will apply when it comes to the countless email-based identifiers floating around programmatic ad systems.

Matching services that allow advertisers to onboard customer email lists to ad sellers’ systems to target ads to specific people have been around for years. Now, the NAI wants to expand the privacy options it gives people into that realm of audience matching beyond just blocking tracking cookies. The group now requires its member companies to provide an opt-out from services using hashed or encrypted emails as the links between a brand’s customer data and identity graphs and other audience matching systems.

Criteo is one of the NAI members enabling the opt-outs. “When Criteo receives an opt-out request, we will stop targeting the [hashed email address] for audience-matching and we will stop using the [hashed email address] for tailored advertising,” said Karsten Rieke, senior director, product management, identity and privacy at Criteo. “This means we will no longer serve personalized advertising to the identifiers we receive or are linked via this new email process in full compliance with the NAI guidelines,” he added.

People who want to opt-out of audience matching for ads must visit the NAI site and — yes — supply their email address. “If you don’t want information linked to your email address to be used for digital advertising, please enter your email address below, and our participating members will not use this data,” states the new tool on the NAI site. In most or all cases, a link to the tool will be available inside privacy policies or data collection choice areas on the websites of NAI’s members participating in the program. 

But, with links to the opt-outs buried inside privacy policies, the tool could have limited impact on consumer privacy in general. “How many consumers are going to find and understand this opt-out?” asked Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy and technology policy for Consumer Reports, calling the approach “weak sauce.”

Gaps and questions