By Lou Mastria
Big Idea: Data stewardship is the foundation of our work, which enables both meaningful privacy protections, delivers benefits to consumers and creates enterprise value. Preserving this balance is critical to policy and market leadership.
Privacy for consumers is vital in our work at AdChoices, but consumers expect more than one goal. Our true mission through the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) Principles is to preserve and enable safeguards, competition, innovation and value in step with consumer expectations. The digital economy only functions as expected when all of these elements are supported. The goal is a privacy framework that delivers real value to consumers and businesses at the same time.
Such was the discussion during an industry leaders’ panel at DAA Summit 2026 in San Diego, CA, last month where Scott Howe, CEO of LiveRamp, and Rick Erwin, CEO of Adstra, joined us to talk about this matter with the perspective from the corner office. Our session – Leading with Data: Competition, Economic Growth & Social Contributions in a Privacy-First World. Both speakers provided real-world anecdotes as to how responsible data collection and use powers advertising, builds businesses, empowers consumers to make choices, and benefits the economy at large.
DAA CEO Lou Mastria (left) closes out the first day of DAA Summit 2026 in San Diego with Scott Howe, CEO, LiveRamp, joining onstage, and Rick Erwin, CEO, Adstra, joining remotely from Chicago for the panel "Leading with Data: Competition, Economic Growth & Social Contributions in a Privacy-First World."
Data Is the Fuel – Though To Minimize It Needlessly is Harmful
Data is the fuel that makes the modern corporation succeed – or fail.
“If you look at the last twenty years and you look at the companies that have been growing and those that have not,” LiveRamp’s Scott Howe said, ““there is one common denominator across the growth. Almost without exception, the companies that have been able to analyze data, ingest it, and act on it quickly have been the winners.”
“And so across every company, there's a dawning recognition that you better be pretty smart about how to do it. How do you utilize data?” Howe continued. “Because if you can bring data to bear on any decision that you're making in the enterprise, whether it's marketing, operations, or finance, you will make a better decision and you will have a better outcome. And that's particularly true as we step into the world of AI.”
A recent study from the S&P Global Marketing Intelligence for the Ad Coalition puts compelling numbers on Howe’s observation. The data-driven advertising segment of the economy is today worth $10.4 trillion (notably, that’s 21.4 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic Product), with 29 million American jobs linked to data-driven advertising, and that segment is growing at twelve times the rate of the broader industry. As Howe noted, restrictions that become too radical would risk the ability of thousands of companies – small and big – to grow and service their consumers.
“I think that right now the gulf between what consumers care about from a privacy standpoint and what legislators and regulators care about has never been greater,” Adstra’s Rick Erwin said. One of the largest publishers in the world uses data responsibly to match millions of visitors with relevant commerce offers from its 5,000 affiliate partners, he reported. For that single publisher, data-driven advertising is the difference between millions of revenue and laying off thousands of employees. Yet lawmakers, perhaps surprisingly, haven’t kept pace with the speed, efficiency and consumer benefits that data is delivering.
Even governments rely directly on data for tailored ads because of their efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. For example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services used targeted advertising to reach marginalized communities during COVID and credited this outreach with saving 55,000 lives.
That same data use would have been illegal under previous privacy proposals that were pushed in Congress at the time (and some in the states). This is why the expectations to get the privacy balance right are so critical. The goal is a uniform, national framework that protects consumers and keeps work like this possible, something we see in the latest iteration of federal Congressional proposals, the SECURE Data Act.
Leading with Data: The Default Must Be ‘Benefits-On’
The work in front of our industry is not to solely defend data, but rather make the case for what data enables: The $10.4 trillion economy it powers, the jobs generated, the companies it keeps in business, the consumers it serves every day, or the lives it saves. None of that exists without responsible data use, and none of that is protected by a privacy framework that treats data as a problem – or tries to pick winners and losers among data-dependent business models.
The DAA Summit 2026 was a reminder that the future of the digital economy is not just a conversation about privacy. It is a competition conversation, an innovation conversation, and a consumer value conversation that our industry has to lead at once.
Let me extend a very special thanks to our industry keynote speakers Scott Howe and Rick Erwin for their participation at DAA Summit 2026.
The DAA also acknowledges our summer associate Bobby Signorelli for his editorial support in the preparation of this post.
