“Targeted ads are helpful and ad competition is helpful,” said Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, which owns the online advertising exchange DoubleClick. In a conversation last week at The New York Times, Mr. Schmidt said that the explosion in online consumer monitoring was increasing friction about how strict the privacy limits should be. And, he added, “it’s going to get a lot worse.”

The White House, meanwhile, has broader goals. It set up its own interagency panel that will look at how to protect consumers while also making United States companies more competitive internationally. It also wants to ensure that any restrictions do not impede law enforcement and national security efforts.

Congress also is expected to intervene, and this may be one area where there is bipartisan cooperation. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the trade commission and privacy issues, will soon have a Republican at its head, but members of both parties in the House and Senate have recently called on companies to account for intrusions or breaches of consumer privacy.

Which agency or group leads the debate could go a long way toward determining the result.

“There is going to be a lot of confusion over the competing proposals and which version Congress and the American people should pay attention to,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group. “We especially fear a policy that is designed to advance the competitive positions of U.S. companies and will undermine new pro-consumer protections at the F.T.C.”

Officially, Commerce Department and trade commission officials say they see the two reports as complementary. The commission will most likely address “privacy by design,” or how privacy features may be built into browsers or Web sites. It will also encourage greater transparency about when data is being collected and how it will be used, and the need for clearly worded privacy or user notices.

The Commerce Department will focus on global and domestic privacy laws, and will have a broad perspective on privacy issues, officials say. In an address last month at a meeting of privacy commissioners in Jerusalem, Lawrence E. Strickling, an assistant Commerce secretary, said he believed in “a strong role for voluntary but enforceable codes of conduct.”