Advertisers, agencies, publishers, adtech firms and trade associations have joined together to launch the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, a timely initiative given recent changes around cookies and mobile IDs.
The Partnership aims to advance and protect critical functionalities like customization and analytics for digital media and advertising, while safeguarding privacy and improving the consumer experience.
The governing group of the Partnership will include some of the most influential organizations in advertising:
• Trade bodies: 4A’s, Association of National Advertisers/ANA, Interactive Advertising Bureau, IAB Tech Lab, Network Advertising Initiative, World Federation of Advertisers
• Advertisers: Ford, General Motors, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Unilever
• Agencies: UM (an IPG Mediabrands company), Publicis Media
• Publishers: NBC Universal
• Ad Tech/Martech: Adobe, MediaMath, The Trade Desk
Four working groups of industry stakeholders will shape different elements of the initiative: Business Practices; Technical Standards; Privacy, Policy, and Legal Considerations; and Communications & Education.
The Partnership will be led by the ANA’s Bill Tucker as Executive Director, ensuring the effort has a core focus on marketer needs.
“In the ancient story of the Tower of Babel, the city collapsed because its inhabitants lost the ability to speak a common language,” said Tucker, in announcing the Partnership. “The digital advertising industry faces a comparable challenge around addressability today, as recent changes announced by operating systems, browsers, and other technologies, if implemented, will significantly impact the traditional marketplace language of cookies and mobile IDs.
“The Partnership was created to serve as a collaborative forum for our industry to ensure addressability standards that preserve privacy, provide a consistent and effective framework for advertisers, and enrich the consumer experience.”
Partnership draft principles
1. Consumer privacy should remain a foundational pillar of the solution by providing consumers with meaningful transparency and controls, giving the marketplace the tools to understand consumer preferences and the ability to abide by those preferences.
2. Consumers should have access to diverse and competitive content offerings, supported by their choices to engage with digital advertising in exchange for content and services.
3. Business operations, including ad targeting, ad delivery, frequency capping, campaign management, analytics, cross-channel deployment, optimization, and attribution should be sufficiently supported and improved upon through better technological and policy standards for all critical use cases.
4. Solutions should be standardized and interoperable for consumers and businesses across browsers, devices, and platforms, subject to applicable privacy laws and guidelines and to the extent it is reasonably technically feasible, efficient, effective, and improved over existing technology.
5. All browsers, devices, and platforms should allow equal access, free from unreasonable interference, to the new solutions.
6. Companies that utilize the resulting solutions should follow industry and legal privacy standards, with strong accountability and enforcement for those that violate the standards.
Stephan Loerke, CEO, World Federation of Advertisers, added: “We believe that it is crucial for the global advertising industry to work together and focus on using data in a positive way to create a better, more sustainable future for online advertising.
“This means improving the way we use data to reduce consumer annoyance and bombardment, preventing bad actors from profiting from digital advertising and creating the right conditions for a diverse and effective advertising ecosystem to thrive in all markets.”
Sourced from ANA; additional content by WARC staff
