By Lou Mastria
Big Idea: DAA’s choice tools set a global standard for information and choice around interest-based advertising, but companies should also work with their legal teams to ensure they meet any relevant compliance obligations under state law.
If you’ve ever been stuck under a leaking kitchen sink holding the wrong wrench, you know one of the most fundamental rules of home repair: Use the right tool for each job.
A decision from the California Privacy Protection Agency (CalPrivacy) this week reinforces why the same rule applies in the privacy space, as the CalPrivacy reached a settlement with a youth sports media company, PlayOn, that resulted in a fine and required the company to commit to complying with state law, including using the correct “tool” for its state legal obligations.
According to CalPrivacy, PlayOn was engaged in the “sale and sharing” of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CPPA) and thus required to offer consumers an opt-out for that practice, but its “only methods for submitting [such] Requests … were through a toll-free phone number and e-mail address,” which CalPrivacy said were not sufficient to comply with the law in relation to tools integrated in PlayOn’s digital properties.
In the decision, CalPrivacy also noted that PlayOn’s privacy policy said consumers could “opt-out directly with third parties” via the DAA’s choice tools, but the company failed to offer a method by which consumers could opt out directly from its own CPPA-covered sales activities.
We want to emphasize this distinction. The DAA’s opt-out tools are designed to provide a means to comply with the DAA’s Principle of Control for Interest-Based Advertising (IBA), which is separate and distinct from the obligations under California law. Linking to another organization’s opt-out method is a benefit for consumers but not a replacement for your own obligations under California law, as this week’s decision reminds us.
For the last 15 years, DAA has set privacy principles to provide consumers with transparency and control around targeted advertising. Those independently-enforced principles are aligned with many jurisdictions that require an opt-out for targeted ads (currently 19 states in the US), and are expected best practices nationwide.
In addition, DAA offers a suite of tools to assist companies in meeting their obligations under the principles, as well as a gateway for consumers to opt-out of receiving targeted advertising from all companies in the program. The DAA tools are comprehensive and provide applicable choice for all of the commonly used identifiers in the market today, which makes it easier for companies to future-proof their privacy posture for current and prospective use cases.
Those DAA tools for IBA are widely recognized and strongly supported by consumers, as a new DAA survey conducted last month showed. In the survey, a record 85% of Americans now recognize the AdChoices icon, and large majorities correctly identify what the AdChoices Icon does (58%); have clicked on it in the past (67%), and say they find it useful (78%) and easy-to-understand (85%).
In short, while the DAA tools remain the foundation of best practices for interest-based advertising nationwide, companies should also ensure they also take any additional steps needed to comply with any specific and/or unique state legal requirements.
