John Gamble
Marketing Manager | TRUSTe
@johnaddison
The White House just released a major privacy report, which we previously covered here and here. Their press conference, held yesterday, also saw two important privacy developments for the online advertising industry:
1. The White House publicly endorsed the DAA program
In no uncertain terms the Obama Administration called the DAA program a model of success for “enforceable codes of conduct”. This ringing public endorsement dramatically lowers the likelihood of privacy legislation and justifies the investment hundreds of companies have made in complying with the self-regulatory program. It took the industry a while to reach critical mass, but 900 billion compliant monthly ad impressions are hard to ignore. Self-regulation is on a clear path to success.
2. The DAA will work to support Do Not Track integration
This is a logical extension of the DAA program and will remove ambiguity and uncertainty that has hampered the space. To be clear, this announcement does not mean that in-ad icons and cookie-based opt-out implementations will be replaced. The White House has clearly endorsed this current method of self-regulation. Rather, since DNT and in-ad privacy notice/choice are complimentary and each offers unique advantages, the natural evolution will be a seamless integration of these two technologies.
The really great news for our customers is that TRUSTe is ahead of the pack on this integration: we have developed a DNT-integrated ad tag solution capable of recognizing a user’s DNT preference while simultaneously leveraging the in-ad icon transparency. Our integrated ad-tag solution can automatically record a user’s DNT preference in the cookie-based preference manager, making for a truly seamless integration. To learn more about our new ad tag check out our developer blog.
TRUSTe has long recognized the importance of browser-based privacy controls and so we’ve made it a priority over the years to work hand-in-hand with industry groups and companies to develop products and industry standards in this space. In March 2011 TRUSTe partnered with Microsoft to develop a unique Tracking Protection List (TPL) for IE9. TRUSTe is also a member of the W3C working group, and we have leveraged our deep privacy expertise to help the group develop industry Do Not Track standards.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to your TRUSTe rep if you’re a client or our Director of Advertising Product Management, Jalal Nasir: jnasir (at) truste (dot) com.
