Congress subcommittees are hearing testimony today about the connection between online advertising and privacy.
Privacy advocates worry that too much information about the average Internet user is being collected to create targeted ads. They say people should be able to surf the Web without getting a bunch of ads based on their likes and dislikes shoved in their faces.
Representatives from Google, Facebook and Yahoo! were all expected to testify about their business practices.
Advertisers are already having a tough time in this economy. Online ad revenue was down 5 percent last month, the first year-over-year drop the industry has seen since the dotcoms went belly-up several years ago. They worry that more regulation would hamper their sales efforts even more.
The big search engine companies say they’ve made steps to protect privacy related to behavior-based advertising, but critics say it’s not enough.
