Online Behavioral Advertising: How to Stay Consumer-Friendly

leading advertising industry associationsIn July 2009 leading advertising industry organizations introduced a cross-industry Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising [PDF here]. The essence of the Program was to bring about “consumer-friendly standards to online behavioral advertising across the Internet” — ones that would correspond with the “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising” [PDF here] proposed by the Federal Trade Commission in February 2009 [source].

However, as it frequently is the case with newly-introduced rules and guidelines, up until this month there has been little uniformity on how exactly to alert web users to the behavioral targeting collection and use of their data.

Earlier this week I received an October 2010 newsletter from Gary Kibel of Davis & Gilbert LLP (D&G), where he notifies us that 5 major advertising industry associations — American Association of Advertising Agencies, the American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, as well as DMA and IAB — have joined their forces to form the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), “which just launched a self-regulatory program for online advertising”. The essense of the program is to have participating companies display a special icon on their webpages where consumer data is collected. “By clicking on the icon, consumers will be able to access disclosure information about the participating companies’ data use and collection practies, adn they can opt-out of behavioral targeting”. D&G continues with another important bit of information:

Beginning in 2011, the Councis of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB) and the DMA will monitor and enforce compliance with the Program and will manage consumer complaint resolution.

DAA’s Implementation Guide on how marketers can implement the Self-Regulatory Principles may be found on the AboutAds.info website here.

The full D&G alert on the introduction of the Self-Regulatory Program may be found here.

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