DAA Blog

2020 may be in a rear-view mirror, but its impact on all of us – professionally as well as personally – remains significant. What we once might have taken for granted, soon became cherished: just the ability to wake up each day, be with our families, and go to work. Such an existence – anything but mundane – wasn’t available to everyone.

As we turn the page to 2021 and we look ahead with hope of returning to “normal,” we are guided by the direct-to-consumer changes consumers, publishers, brands, agencies, and ad tech all adapted to in the year that just passed. Just as you did, we narrowed our focus on what delivers the most value – for our participants, for consumers and the digital advertising ecosystem at large.

As we enter 2021, we do so in a way that reliably will continue to produce real-time transparency, halo effects for brands and publishers, and an acknowledgment of the significance the responsible ad-subsidized ecosystem produces.

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As I post this, hundreds of privacy, compliance, marketing and legal professionals at DAA participating companies will soon receive a copy of a newly updated Enforcement in Action casebook, our fourth edition cataloging what we’ve learned from nine years of independent accountability.

Two organizations in the United States – BBB National Program’s (BBBNP) Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP) and the accountability team at Association of National Advertisers (ANA) receive complaints and inquiries, both from consumers and other businesses, regarding DAA Principles compliance. We don’t see the work they do behind the scenes – but we do benefit from the integrity their work has created.

Enforcement with Teeth – Overwhelmingly Cooperative… and Instructive

Independent enforcement is one important hallmark of the Digital Advertising Alliance program.  Brands, agencies, publishers and ad tech companies involved in digital and mobile interest-based marketing space are called upon and expected to adhere to the self-regulatory principles DAA brought to market a decade ago to help consumers with privacy transparency and control.

DAA relies on two organizations – the BBB National Program’s Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP) and the ethics and accountability team at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) – to exercise independent oversight, using the DAA Principles to guide their compliance work. Independence means there’s a firewall between DAA and the investigations the two...

With the industry’s heightened attention on identity management amid policy making and technology developments, it’s no wonder the ad tech community – joined by agencies, publishers and advertisers – is organizing to make sure that crucial links to the consumer are not lost amid the development of new technical architectures.

Such interruptions clearly are not sustainable – and would likely harm our Internet economy either by concentrating power cloaked inside “opt-in” regimes, and de-funding the long tail of the open web, where consumers ...

Americans are struggling to recover from the worst economic collapse in modern times, with tens of millions out of work, struggling to pay their bills, or reducing household expenses to make ends meet.

As bad as the financial situation is today, a new survey conducted by the DAA shows it could get worse, as respondents believed they would face significant new costs without the advertising-based financial model that funds popular digital content and services like news, entertainment, sports, and email.

According to the survey, Americans place a value of more than $1,400 per year on the array of free digital content, services, and apps that are currently funded by...