Online marketing, time for a change

This week I read a couple of articles that confirmed to me that online marketing needs an overhaul. First the announcement of new guidelines for behavioral advertising and then a note out of the VRM movement discussing how consumers can regain control

Firstly the BBC report, New guidelines on behavioural ads that "The online advertising industry has launched a set of guidelines for a genre of adverts that have been causing controversy" specifically where ads based on people's browsing activity (as practiced by Google, AOL, Yahoo). The guidelines state that companies practicing this form of advertising need to provide Notice to the user, ask for their Consent and Educate the consumer as to the use of the information.

Secondly, PhilWhitehouse's Blogspot post VRM: Collectively immense around the topic of Vendor Relationship Management discussing the notion of the Personal RFP where the individual is able to place a request and that request is brokered out to a network of vendors (selectively) and with the proper protection for the consumer's identity and allowing the consumer to maintain control of the relationship with potential vendors.

The time is ripe for a change.

Update: Google is now serving up behaviorial ad's (here's the latest from the BBC)