01 Dec 2010, 2:07 pm
The Working Party, which is made up of data protection watchdogs from the EU's 27 countries, produced guidance this summer outlining what it thought last year's new EU telecoms laws meant for behavioural advertising.
It said that cookie preferences were not sufficient to count as permission for tracking and that sites, or ad networks, would have to ask specific permission of users. Advertisers had hoped that they could track anyone whose cookie settings allowed it.
Now according to Dutch direct marketing trade body DDMA (in Dutch) the Working Party has written to advertising networks demanding they outline their plans for complying with its guidance.
"The Article 29 Working Party invites you to explain the solutions that you are considering to implement the Article 29 Working Party recommendations with respect to compliance with Article 5(3) of the revised ePrivacy Directive," the letter said.
The Working Party's guidance acknowledged that it may not be necessary for every single site using behavioural advertising to be given permission, and that advertising networks which can serve thousands of sites might need to be given a once-off permission that could cover all of those sites.
