From what I can tell, an initiative by some consumer advocates (under the umbrella of the W3C) made enough noise and got a few people from some companies to join a mailing list and do a few conference calls. Most of the major ad companies (Quantcast, KISSMetrics, etc) didn't even join the group. Predictably, since the industry has no interest in advancing the issue, the group died without achieving anything.

That post just reinforces my view, in my opinion.