The Consumer Protection Built into AdChoices

Big idea (in full): AdChoices has been designed and implemented through the lens of consumer protection. That is why it remains a central driver for consumer trust in digital advertising through the rigorous self-regulatory standards it requires, the independent enforcement of those standards, and the broad consumer support for the information and choice tools it offers.

Bestselling author Jim Collins popularized a framework for achieving greatness in the business world based on what he called “the Hedgehog Concept.”

Collins encouraged every organization to crystallize its efforts around a simple, unifying concept that focused on your organization’s unique skills, your customer’s needs, and the goal that ignites your passions.

For the Digital Advertising Alliance, our Hedgehog Concept is consumer protection.

Consumer Protection Is the DAA’s North Star

The DAA program was designed to answer two basic consumer questions: “Why did I get this ad?” and “What can I do about it?”

To answer the first question, the DAA worked with more than a hundred of the world’s largest ad networks and platforms -- as well as thousands of publishers, brands, agencies, and adtech companies -- to design a universal gateway for information on interest-based ads through the AdChoices Icon. That Icon now can be accessed across the digital medium, from trillions of banner ads to the world’s most popular apps, websites, privacy policies, videos, and CTV interfaces.

By clicking on the Icon, consumers can also access choices that address the second question. Through an easy-to-understand interface, consumers are given the ability to opt-out of interest-based advertising (IBA) from a single company or all of the companies participating in the DAA.  

Many brands, publishers, and ad networks have leveraged the broad consumer recognition of the AdChoices Icon to provide additional information and choices about data collection and use to their customers, reinforcing a virtuous cycle of recognition, use, and recommendation.

Those popular consumer tools are just the public-facing side of the DAA’s work, however. Behind them stands the edifice of DAA standards for consumer protection, as codified in the DAA Self-Regulatory Principles and more than half a dozen updates offering guidance around new technologies, practices, and business models.

Those Principles serve as the foundation of the DAA’s work, and their obligations cover all companies in the digital advertising industry, regardless of whether they formally participate in DAA programs.

Compliance with those Principles is supervised by two independent enforcement bodies, the Association of National Advertisers’ Center for Ethical Marketing and BBB National Programs’ Digital Advertising Accountability Program.

Those accountability partners review complaints, investigate allegations, address issues of non-compliance, and -- when necessary -- refer non-compliant companies to the relevant legal or regulatory agencies. In total, they have taken nearly 150 publicly announced accountability actions, ranging from simple remediations to broader efforts receiving attention in The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets.    

But the DAA’s consumer protections are not limited to notice and consent around IBA. Since its founding, DAA Principles have also offered strong consumer protections that align with federal laws and include restrictions on the collection and use of online activity data for:

• Employment,
• Credit,
• Health care treatment, and
• Insurance eligibility.

DAA Choice Tools Complement Legal Notice and Controls

In addition, DAA’s choice tools complement the notice and controls advanced by consumers through their elected policy makers in a majority of the states with opt out choice for targeted advertising. 

The DAA offers three tools – WebChoices (and its Protect My Choices extension), AppChoices, and YourAdChoices Token Opt-Out/Revocation Tool – and each tool was developed to support consumer needs across the multiple platforms, identifiers and technologies in use in digital advertising, as no single choice tool can address them all.

In combination, the three DAA tools are designed to give consumers transparency and control about data collection and use for digital advertising. (And we remind consumers that they can make choices in any or all of them).

Similarly, the transparency and controls enabled through the AdChoices icon help brands put their consumer protection efforts – and the trust that such protections enable – front-and-center in their ads and on their digital properties.

AdChoices Helps All of Us Keep Our Industry Promises to Consumers

Both the AdChoices-enabled privacy notices and the DAA choice tools help us keep our industry promises to consumers as well. But more significantly, it’s the long-term commitment of responsible digital advertisers to DAA Principles which has served consumers well.

Advertisers know that their growth depends on consumers and consumer trust, and almost three-quarters of consumers in a recent survey (72%) said that AdChoices increases trust in the advertisers that use it.

Consumers may not know and care about nerdy phrases or jargon such as “algorithms” “dynamic pricing,” “cookies,” “hashed emails,” or “IP addresses.”  They do care about being respected, being empowered, being rewarded and being served – the very tenets of relevance in advertising.  It’s no surprise that more than three-quarters (78%) said the AdChoices Icon is useful and the vast majority (85%) said the AdChoices Icon is easy to understand.

So as we look to the years ahead, it’s mindful to keep our self-regulatory discipline – focused as it is on consumer protection and service – very much in the forefront. The trust we create today with consumers through AdChoices is the foundation for growth in the future.