The online advertising industry’s version of a do-not-track mechanism officially began on Monday and quickly drew derision from consumer and privacy advocates.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau required its members — a who’s who of the online ad world, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook — to embrace a new code of conduct that requires use of a turquoise triangle with a lowercase “i” at the center.

The icon enables consumers to click through to a Web page where they can opt out of being silently tracked online, a widespread practice for collecting behavioral information that helps advertisers deliver more relevant ads.

The IAB has called on many of its 500 members to display the blue triangle on Web pages carrying hidden programs that track precisely where you go and with whom you associate on the Internet.

The self-regulatory campaign proves “that the industry can successfully deliver transparency and choice to consumers,” says Mike Zaneis, IAB senior vice president and general counsel. “We’re doing so today instead of waiting for a false promise of government regulation in the future.”

However, the icon is ineffective, contends Carmen Balber, director of the Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

“The IAB’s program does not give consumers the ability to opt out of tracking — either in theory or practice,” says Balber. “Companies who participate agree to stop targeted advertisements for consumers that opt out. However, they may continue to track (others) at will.”

Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, says the icon is “designed to be ignored” and gives only general information on how advertising and social networks track Internet users.

According to a study earlier this month by the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University, only 11.3% of IAB members to date displayed the icon, which has been available since April 2010.

Zaneis contends that the Stanford study is off the mark. He says 350 companies — including non-IAB members — have licensed the blue icon and are actively using it. “The icon appears in or around tens of billions of online ads every day,” Zaneis says.

In a privacy study by the University of Pennsylvania and University of California-Berkeley, 84% of respondents said they object to being tracked online.

Even so, the online ad industry is pushing hard against privacy advocates and elected officials who believe the collection and use of personal information gathered by advertising and social networks have gotten out of hand.

The IAB wants President Obama to endorse self-regulation, including the turquoise triangle, in a forthcoming White House white paper, Chester says.

The group’s most influential members, led by Google and Facebook, are lobbying the Federal Trade Commission to do likewise in a privacy report due from the agency before year’s end, Chester says.

Self-regulation efforts by the online advertising industry have been tried for more than a decade. Yet self-regulation remains skewed to getting users to opt in to being tracked “via using your social data, video and other free downloads and engaging online apps that increasingly work via stealth means,” Chester says.

Tracking data culled from your Internet searches and surfing is increasingly getting commingled with the information consumers disclose at websites for shopping, travel, health or jobs. And personal disclosures made on popular social networks, along with the preferences expressed via Web applications on smartphones and tablet PCs are getting tossed into the mix.

Privacy advocates worry that health companies, insurers, lenders, employers, lawyers, regulators and law enforcement could begin to acquire detailed profiles derived from tracking data to use unfairly against people.

The icon “is another example of the failure of self-regulation to protect consumers from unwanted monitoring of every move they make on the Internet and their mobile devices,” says Balber. “Action by Congress and the FTC to require a do-not-track-me option is crucial for consumers to gain control over their own information.”

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