Claria claims to be cleaning up its act

From today’s Washington Post:

Internet Ad Pioneer Now Shunning Pop-Ups

A new service Claria Corp. is launching this month will still deliver advertising to the computer desktops of Web surfers. Only this time, they won’t be annoying pop-ups. …

[Claria] began a pilot in May of a new ad network called BehaviorLink that serves banner ads targeted to a user’s interests. With software for it installed, someone reading online news articles on maternity might get pitches for baby products. And while Claria’s pop-up ads sometimes covered up someone else’s Web site, BehaviorLink ads come with the site’s permission. In some cases, Claria buys ad space and resells it at a premium; in others, Claria works out a revenue-sharing arrangement.

The story quotes Ben Edelman, who points out that the new Claria service will still require that the user have a piece of software installed. “The question is how sneaky they are going to be about it.” Ben’s absolutely right. The big question is how the Claria software gets installed. There are too many loopholes in the whole affiliate distribution system, which allow the parent company to claim that “rogue affiliates” are actually doing the bad things. Meanwhile, of course, they benefit financially from those dishonest installations. According to the Post story, Claria made $100 million last year, mostly from pop-ups. When that much money is on the line, there are too many incentives for people to cheat, and without scrupulous third-party verification I refuse to believe that this service will be as clean as Claria promises it will be.

The company claims to have hired privacy consultants and to have cleaned up its act. We’ll see. “They have to be completely aboveboard and take extra steps other companies don’t have to do to gain trust back,” Ari Schwartz, associate director with the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the Post.

Indeed.