Matthew Shevach
Director, Product Marketing | TRUSTe
@matthewshevach
A screenshot of the new DAA website
The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), a self-regulatory body of the online advertising industry, has launched a new ad campaign and consumer facing website. The new campaign, titled ‘Your AdChoices’, is a public education campaign that will run across media channels with creative produced pro bono by the Salt Lake City office of MRM. The campaign focuses on highlighting the consumer benefits of behavioral advertising and educating consumers on how they take control of their own online advertising preferences.
An example of an ad for the new DAA campaign
TRUSTe is a partner of the DAA and is also the leading provider of compliance technology for their self-regulatory program (through our TRUSTed Ads platform). To further educate consumers on issues of online advertising and privacy we have launched an interactive page providing information on the inner workings of behavioral advertising and consumer privacy choices. Google also recently launched its ‘Good to Know’ campaign that will place ads in U.S. newspapers, magazines, and public spaces to educate consumers on how to protect their personal information online. Campaigns like these will help drive consumer awareness understanding of the online advertising space and help them make informed choices about sharing and protecting their online privacy.
TRUSTe’s own consumer privacy research has shown that consumer awareness of behavioral advertising is already quite high at 70%, but less than half of consumers are favorable toward it. One of the most interesting findings in our research was that consumer favorability towards behavioral advertising increased 100% when they were assured that their personally identifiable information was not involved in the process.
The online advertising industry has made great progress toward the goal of protecting consumer privacy, but there is still more work to do. Broad public advertising campaigns (like those launched by the DAA and Google) will help consumers make informed privacy choices and make their perception of behavioral advertising more positive if they can better understand its benefits.
Greater public awareness will bolster the existing investment companies have made in self-regulation and will put more pressure on those companies that have yet to take action. If your company engages in targeted advertising and you have not taken steps to protect consumer privacy, feel free to contact us for information on how you can self-regulate your online data and privacy practices.
Check out the new DAA campaign and let us know what you think. I’ll leave you with one of their first videos for the new campaign: