By Lou Mastria
Big Idea: DAA Principles are only as strong as our enforcement partners. Independent accountability, through BBB National Programs' Digital Advertising Accountability Program and ANA's Center for Ethical Marketing, is what turns commitment into trust.
Big Idea (in full): DAA Principles are only as strong as our enforcement partners. Independent accountability, through BBB National Programs' Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP) and Association of Natioanl Advertisers' Center for Ethical Marketing (CEM), is what turns commitment into trust.
Both trust and proof are the foundation for the uniform national privacy framework we are working toward through passage of the SECURE Data Act.
Consumers and policymakers rely on the independent and continuously monitored self-regulation of the DAA Program. This 15+ year-old promise to provide consumer transparency and control would not be possible without the evergreen commitment of thousands of brands to be proactive about responsible data collection and use in their ads, applications, and websites and honoring consumer choices. This commitment supports continual compliance with the DAA Principles throughout the marketplace.
Rob Hartwell, partner at Venable LLP, who also wrote the first edition of the DAA Enforcement in Action casebook (now in its fifth edition), led a conversation with two senior leaders who help make our Principles and our promises to consumers real in the market: Mary Engle, executive vice president for policy at BBB National Programs, and Chris Oswald, executive vice president for law, ethics and government relations at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Both walked through their respective organizations’ recent enforcement work and what lessons the rest of the industry can learn about responsible data collection and use for advertising purposes along with the vitally important consumer choices enabled through the DAA’s icon notice program.
This kind of dogged determination for enforceable standards is praised by lawmakers and consumers alike. And, in the context of the current federal push for a privacy law that can serve as a national standard, it should not be overlooked that such efforts could form a recognized “code of conduct” within the recently introduced SECURE Data Act that is seen as the best vehicle for a national standard in many years.
DAA Counsel Rob Hartwell of Venable LLP leads the accountability panel at DAA Summit 2026 in San Diego.
DAA Accountability Teaches Marketers to Do the Right Thing
BBB National Programs runs the Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP) which began enforcement of DAA Principles in 2011. DAAP monitors the digital marketplace for compliance and takes in thousands of consumer complaints and queries a year, not all of which pertain to DAA Principles. When it finds a potential problem, it works with the company to resolve the matter and then publishes the decision..
The impressive track record on case resolution is the point. Since the program's inception 15 years ago, DAAP has issued more than 145 formal decisions. Only three of those ever had to be referred to the Federal Trade Commission or other relevant federal regulator for a company's failure to participate or comply.
"We get very good voluntary compliance," said Mary Engle, who noted that the cooperative and constructive nature of the discussions between companies and DAAP is most often simply a matter of industry education on how to do the right thing.
Recent DAAP casework shows how that compliance happens. One such example is a matter concerning Zillow. As the DAAP practice goes, once it learns a company has other brands within its family, it checks those too for compliance. This effort pulled in Zillow-owned Trulia, HotPads and StreetEasy, across both their websites and their apps, as well.
"We saw traffic indicating that consumers' browsing activity was being used for IBA [interest-based advertising], but consumers were not given the proper notice of this [collection and use] and the ability to opt out," Engle said.
The companies came into compliance by adding an AdChoices link as a footer on their sites that routes users to a clearly labeled "Third Party Tracking and Interest-Based Advertising" section of the privacy notice, and by adding similar AdChoices notice and controls to the company’s mobile apps’ menu.
A more recent DAAP enforcement action involved AudioMob, a London-based platform that serves audio ads inside mobile games. The fix there was a creative one. Rather than build a notice from scratch, the company repurposed a "report this ad" thumbnail it already had and relabeled it AdChoices, enabling in-ad notice with links to opt-out opportunities.
Engle closed with practical advice for any company that wants to stay ahead of a potential case. Keep DAA Principles compliance consistent across every platform used to engage consumers. Sit down with product, legal and IT teams to understand data flows and how they align with privacy policies – and any gaps that may exist.
"It's important to be aware of third-party integrations that you may have, especially when it comes to sensitive data categories like [precise] location, children's, or health," Engle said. "We do continue to see inconsistency between what's actually happening and what consumers are being told is happening."
During DAA Summit 2026, Mary Engle, executive vice president, policy, BBB National Programs, highlighted 2025 and 2026 independent enforcement actions of the organization's Digital Advertising Accountability Program.
Following the Standard: Advertisers Lean in with Ethical Action
The ANA brings the scale of the buy side to this vital accountability work. It represents more than 40,000 marketers, 20,000 brands and 1,600 member companies, and its Center for Ethical Marketing enforces ethics standards inclusive of the DAA Principles.
Christopher Oswald noted that good intentions count for little without the accountability to back them up. As a government affairs professional, he says that oversight, when demonstrative and effective, serves to provide policy “...umph!”
"It's not just enough to do the right thing. You have to be accountable," Oswald said. "When we go in and talk with lawmakers and policymakers, we have to show how we keep our own side of the street clean." The DAA’s independent and continuously running accountability program does just that.
The ANA, as one of DAA’s accountability mechanisms, takes complaints from both consumers and companies, investigates them through committee work, and reaches out to the company(ies) in question. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the recommended fixes are implemented and immediate, the result of an unintended oversight rather than any commercial bad intent. Referrals to regulators are rare and reserved for the few companies with very poor practices that ignore outreach and requests for resolution. As Oswald put it, the job is not to name and shame. It is to bring companies into compliance, and make sure companies do what they say they do, especially in the context of digital advertising – in their privacy policies, notices and practices.
On artificial intelligence, Oswald pointed to the emerging-technology section of the ANA ethics code, which is being refreshed as part of an ongoing review of ethical practices for AI and related technology. His framing of the AI debate, as it applies to consumer information use, was simple.
"The old rules still apply, whether you're using computers, AI or people," Oswald said. "You've got to do what you say and say what you do."
ANA's Chris Oswald speaks during the accountability panel at DAA Summit 2026 in San Diego.
Independent Accountability Translates to Credibility – and Potentially A New Safe Harbor
The work in front of our industry is not only to write good Principles, but also to enforce them. The cases, the public decisions and the high rate of voluntary compliance are not mere housekeeping. They are the evidence that the industry polices itself effectively, and that evidence is exactly what gives us standing when we ask Congress for a uniform national privacy standard that supports such self-regulation.
That kind of accountability remains a through line from this year’s Summit. A privacy framework earns trust when it is backed by accountability that consumers and lawmakers can review. The SECURE Data Act is the framework worth getting right, and the enforcement work which our two U.S. accountability organizations do every day – case by case is what lets us make that assertion based on the work of the committees and organizations involved that are committed to such self-regulation.
We extend a special thanks to Mary Engle and Chris Oswald for sharing their accountability work at DAA Summit 2026, and to Rob Hartwell for leading the conversation.
The DAA also acknowledges our summer associate Bobby Signorelli for his editorial support in the preparation of this post.
