NAI Blog

The NAI and IAB have released the CLEAR (Control Links for Education and Advertising Responsibly) Ad Notice Technical Specifications. Read the CLEAR Ad Notice Technical Specifications and the accompanying release.

The CLEAR specification provides a template for data that can travel with an ad (metadata), which provides information about the companies involved in that ad placement, whether behavioral information was used, and how to exercise choices regarding such advertising. The information conveyed through metadata will give publishers, advertisers, and ad networks the flexibility to adopt innovative approaches to enhanced consumer disclosures.

As the digital advertising industry moves to deploy a clickable icon in or near online ads, the CLEAR specification provides a technical foundation that will enable consumers who click the icon to receive detailed information about ads based on their interests and behaviors.

Industry agreement on this specification is an important step forward towards implementation of enhanced notice, and the NAI looks forward to working with other leading associations to begin testing and deployment.

–Chuck Curran, NAI Executive Director

For its third town hall on online privacy issues, the FTC asked for comment from the online advertising industry and other interested parties on how we could achieve accountability for best practices or standards for commercial handling of data.  The NAI filed comments on that issue last week that we thought might be of interest. NAIFTCThirdRoundtableComments

Our comments focus on how the NAI’s self-regulatory program helps ensure compliance by the 40 companies who have pledged to abide by the NAI’s code for online behavioral advertising.  We also review how the NAI’s compliance process serves as an effective “first line” of accountability that helps the government by allowing it to focus its enforcement efforts on emerging privacy threats and true “bad actors.”  We also discuss the breadth of participation in the NAI’s compliance program by companies in the OBA marketplace and how such broad participation in self regulation promotes continued technological innovation for consumer privacy protection and the adoption of best practices.  We encourage you to take a look and see what you think.

–Chuck Curran, NAI Executive Director