regulation

DAA Releases Self-Regulatory Guidance For Mobile

Mobile devices give marketers a world of new opportunities for location, real-time, and application-based marketing. But as all industry organizations on K Street know, proactive self-regulation is way better than the other kind of regulation. 

Thus, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), as it did in 2010, is charging forth with its own self-regulation structure, this time on the next consumer-privacy front: Mobile. The organization, comprising some 5,000 companies under the aegis of ad groups like the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), has spent the last couple of years building an extension to mobile devices of its 2010 Online Behavioral Advertising and its 2012 Principles for Multi-site Data paradigms

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The new DAA guidance is designed as a directive for advertisers, agencies, media, and technology companies on how to give consumers the ability to “see and exercise control over the use of cross-app, personal directory, and precise location data in mobile apps,” per the organization.

The 2010 work, among other things, launched the “icon” symbol intended to inform consumers that unless they opt out, their online behavior can be tracked by marketers for use in serving tailored ads and mining behavioral data. That’s one of the elements going mobile. 

DAA Managing Director Lou Mastria said people have become sophisticated about the benefits of digital ads -- mobile or otherwise. They “understand that much of the enjoyment, convenience and information they receive in mobile environments are supported by advertising.” He also points out that digital advertising has -- thanks to device-independent protocols like HTML5 -- made digital marketing device-agnostic. “Brands ... are increasingly converging communications channels – making little distinction as to how customers interact with them.”

Basically, per the DAA, the new guidance explains how to give notice to consumers about data collection on their devices and on different apps they use. It also applies the principle of consumer control to these data collection practices.

Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of IAB, weighs in: "The tenets of consumer privacy and control are critical to the growth and expansion of the entire interactive advertising ecosystem, whether on large or small screens.” He notes that mobile advertising has exploded, in proportion to the ubiquity of smartphones and other connected devices. “Consumers are consistently turning to their mobile devices as powerful digital dashboards that guide them from the moment they wake up, through the workday and into their evening entertainment hours.”

Said Bob Liodice, president and CEO at the ANA: “The expansion of the DAA program into the mobile realm is an extraordinarily important development.” He points out that mobile is the fastest-growing media category. “Half of all U.S. adults now have a connection to the Web through either a smartphone or tablet, so it’s all the more critical that they have control over how they receive advertising on their mobile devices. The DAA mobile guidelines give them that control.”

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