Tracking your every online move

[Commentary] Adiant and Zemanta -- two leading native advertising platforms that blend ads into McCLatchy Newspapers, the Washington Times, Hearst, the Christian Science Monitor, and ABC News, among other online publishers -- announced they are joining forces to create the largest native advertising exchange on the Web, giving marketers the chance to bid in real time on billions of native ad impressions across thousands of desktop and mobile websites. The deal between Adiant and Zemata is just one recent example of how native advertising is ramping up in scale and targeting to meet growing demand.

The Better Business Bureau also made a point of warning publishers that they are required to give “enhanced” notice when data about readers is being used to deliver them native ads on other sites. In its annual staff report, the Federal Trade Commission recommended a series of “concrete steps” that companies could take to make this privacy theater more transparent, but fell short of urging congress to take legislative action, as it has in the past. Until such legislation passes, some scholars and activists fear the worst.

[Damaris Colhoun is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn (NY)]