Measuring the 110th Congress at Twilight

摘要

This Congress began 20 months ago amid predictions that it would be one the most "tech-friendly Congresses" and would push legislation on issues such as net neutrality that had languished during Republican rule. Today, net neutrality legislation continues to languish, and the House and Senate Commerce Committees of this "activist Democratic Congress" have held significantly fewer hearings on Internet issues than the last two Republican Congresses. Where it has engaged in Internet issues, however, this Congress has had significant impact on issues like behavioral targeting and laying the groundwork for comprehensive privacy legislation in the next Congress. Should the Democrats also retake the White House, the party has pledged to promote net neutrality, broadband deployment, and "strengthened privacy protections." There is one area that this Congress has had a major impact without introducing a single bill: behavioral targeting (BT). BT traditionally involved advertising networks collecting a user's Web activity through participating Web sites in order to target ads based on the pseudonymous user's profile. For networks, BT is the Holy Grail, since the targeted ads have three times the response rate of non-targeted ads. After years of building critical mass of participating Web sites and advertiser acceptance, 2007 was the breakout year for BT as revenue jumped 64 percent, and more importantly, the market was expected to grow from $525 million in 2007 to $4.4 billion in 2012.