NAI Blog

Adopting new best practices in a large industry like online advertising can seem a little like turning a large ship. At first, to the outside observer, it may not seem like much is happening, as the changes start slowly and the ship has its existing momentum to overcome. As the ship continues to turn, however, the new course becomes clear, and it can accelerate with ever-increasing momentum.

Today, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) announced that the online advertising industry is fully turned onto the course of adoption of the “ad choices” icon, with broad participation by a hundred of the largest brand marketers, agencies and ad networks.

Not surprisingly, members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) have been among the leaders in adopting, promoting, and distributing the icon to consumer advertisers. Dozens of NAI members have enabled the use of the icon on the ads they serve today, or are rolling it out with their advertising partners within the coming weeks.

Showing that the industry is moving from development to deployment, the DAA also announced that enhanced notice using the “ad choices” icon has been served with more than 2 trillion ads. The icon is visible not just on ads served by NAI companies, but also on the sites of NAI members like Microsoft and Yahoo! that are also Web publishers. If you haven’t already seen the icon, you will soon see if far more across hundreds of other sites as this rollout reaches full deployment.

For anyone who wants to see the changes taking place in the online advertising industry to provide consumers with ubiquitous access to enhanced notice and choice, you won’t have to look far for the “ad choices” icon.

-Chuck Curran, Executive Director

This month C-SPAN’s “The Communicators“ is featuring a series of interviews on online privacy and telecommunications policy.

Last week, FTC Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck gave a regulator’s perspective on the key issues.

This week, Yahoo!’s Anne Toth speaks to the essential role of transparency and control in addressing privacy concerns and building consumer trust.

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

Yahoo! is one of several NAI member companies that have introduced tools that give consumers an enhanced ability to view and manage their online advertising preferences.  We’ve provided links to some of these tools on the right side of the NAI Blog page (“Member Initiatives:  Ad Interest Managers”).

Anne Toth, Yahoo!’s VP & Head of Privacy, recently appeared on ABC News to discuss Yahoo!’s Ad Interest Manager. The Yahoo! ad interest manager lets users select or de-select the types of preference categories used to show them relevant advertising. As Anne said, “It’s about empowering the consumer to manage their online experience, and make it even more relevant to them.”   Preference management tools like Yahoo!’s give users transparency into the ad categories used to provide them with online advertisements.  As the NAI’s recent study shows, more relevant advertising is an important revenue source for Web content and services providers offering consumers such services free of charge.

Check out the video here.