A new bill, the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act (BSAA), was introduced by Democrat lawmakers on Tuesday. The bill would no longer allow advertisers to target ads to consumers, with only a couple of exceptions.
Those exceptions: broad, location-based targeting and contextual ads.
Why the legislation was introduced. “Disinformation, discrimination, voter suppression, privacy abuses,” and other harms were cited by California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, the lead sponsor of the bill, as the reasoning behind pushing this legislation forward.
Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo tweeted its support of the bill, saying that “The collection of your private data to target you w/ads violates your privacy & leads to discrimination, manipulation, & disinformation.”
In short, the lawmakers want to stop allowing advertisers to “exploit” and profit from the data collected from consumers.
Google’s response. Google’s take was both predictable and apparent from the title of the blog post it published: “The harmful consequences of Congress’s anti-tech bills.” This was in reference to this legislation, as well as other antitrust bills pending in the Senate this week (the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act).
How might all of this impact Google search? The end result would be lower-quality search results, Google said. For example, the company warned that the proposed legislation would prevent it from:
- Showing directions from Google Maps in its search results.
- Providing answers to urgent questions.
- Highlighting business information when someone searches for a local business.
- Integrating its products (e.g., Gmail, Calendar, Docs).
Industry says the bill goes too far. The general consensus seems to be that the bill won’t (or at least shouldn’t) pass in its current state and won’t actually accomplish what lawmakers want — and would have serious consequences for the marketing industry.
“This bill, if passed in its current form, would set the entire advertising infrastructure back 5-10 years,” said Matt Van Wagner, president at Find Me Faster, “Essentially, it will make online advertising more akin to billboards, menu mats at Cracker Barrel and perfume inserts in magazines.”