By Lou Mastria
Big Idea: As we enter the New Year, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) has launched a next generation of tools to support companies in delivering consumers transparency and control with respect to advertising.
Big Idea in Detail: As we enter the New Year, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) has launched a next generation of tools to support companies in delivering consumers transparency and control with respect to advertising. In the coming months responsible advertising companies that participate can integrate, test, and offer AdChoices’ new “cookies and beyond” suite of tools, to maintain their leadership across new advertising technologies. DAA expects that brands, publishers, and agencies will incorporate these tools and resources into their policies, disclosures, terms and conditions, and requests for proposals.
The past few years have been a whirlwind of accelerating change as new tools and technologies for interest-based advertising have moved from concept to reality, ranging from new addressable identifiers to CMP integration options.
Since its founding, the DAA has kept pace with similarly rapid changes in technology and business practices by offering new guidance and tools to support the foundational DAA Principles of Transparency and Control, so companies in digital advertising can maintain responsible privacy practices for relevant advertising.
Today DAA is announcing a process to help companies transition to a ‘cookies and beyond’ world that extends that same consumer-focused information and control to the new technologies and tools that are entering the market.
The AdChoices Suite of Tools for ‘Cookies and Beyond’
With the possibility that third-party cookies may be deprecated, the DAA tools are expanding to meet the broader needs of companies and consumers. This suite of ‘cookies and beyond’ technologies and resources keep pace with industry developments and provide consumers with the continued ability to make choices about data-driven advertising across new technologies. These new tools will complement the DAA’s legacy cookie-based tool which will remain in place as long as third-party cookies are deployed in the marketplace.
Following are seven elements to the emerging AdChoices’ suite of tools to help companies continue to engage relevantly and responsibly with consumers as industry change accelerates, along with the expectation for industry adoption of that tool in 2024:
Companies Should Move to Adopt These Tools/Certifications in 2024 (as Relevant):
- Addressable Media Identifier (AMI) Certification (for Companies Issuing AMIs)
- CMP CoMPlement (for Companies Offering or Using CMPs)
- YourAdChoices Token ID Based Opt Out/Revocation Tool (for Companies Using Token-Based IDs for Interest-Based Advertising) | Additional Resources
Companies Should Support Testing of These Tools in 2024 (as Relevant):
- YourAdChoices Preferences Tool (for Companies Offering Token-Based Preferences)
- WebChoices 2.0 (for Companies Participating in the DAA Choice Tool) alongside,
- Protect My Choices Extension 2.0 (for Companies Participating in the DAA Choice Tool)
Companies Should Provide Access to This Information in 2024:
- AboutIdentifiers.org Resource
More details on each tool and the expectations for adoption follow.
1 - Addressable Media Identifiers Certification – Adopt in 2024 (As Relevant)
If your company offers the marketplace an identity solution across sites, apps, platforms, and browsers, then now is the time to achieve DAA certification. Addressable Media Identifiers (AMIs) are differentiated from other identifiers in the market as they are independently certified to a high privacy standard established by a cross-industry initiative.
If your company offers an identification product for advertising purposes, please get it certified with DAA. Such certifications will ease the privacy due diligence burden of potential product users, primarily brands and publishers.
The DAA are also asking brands and publishers now to include DAA-certified AMIs in their RFPS, policies and contracts. To initiate the AMI certification process, visit: https://digitaladvertisingalliance.org/ami
2 - CMP CoMPlement – Adopt in 2024 (As Relevant)
The CMP CoMPlement allows Recognized CMPs to receive a direct API feed from AdChoices’ ‘cookies and beyond’ tools and the ability to feature an AdChoices interface within their platform. This allows for CMPs and CDPs to act as integration partners for DAA-participating brands, publishers, and agencies by effectively extending their services to industry-level transparency and choice management. Participating companies using a CMP may want to learn more about how both can work together for DAA compliance.
To learn more and get involved, please email Julie Ford at julie@aboutads.info.
3 - YourAdChoices (Token ID-Based Opt Out/Revocation) Tool – Adopt in 2024 (As Relevant)
This year, DAA added support for mobile phone numbers to the AdChoices Token Opt-Out/Revocation Tool (youradchoices.com/token). Now, consumers may opt out a hashed version of their email address and/or mobile phone number from relevant advertising where such ad IDs are deployed. Companies that are using token identifiers in place of, or in conjunction with cookies and mobile ad IDs should sign up as soon as possible to test and integrate the tool to continue offering consumer choice effectively.
4 - YourAdChoices Preferences Tool – Test in 2024 (As Relevant)
DAA has added support for a new feature on the AdChoices Token Tool: the ability for consumers to select categories of advertising. Consumers have two options: they can either use the traditional opt-out tool, or they can choose to customize their advertising interests, effectively expressing a more nuanced choice.
When they select the customization option, consumers are shown a list of 24 categories (derived from commonly used industry taxonomies). They then can request to limit ads from some or all of the listed categories. To continue providing enhanced control mechanisms, companies should sign up to test the tool.
5 - WebChoices 2.0 –Test in 2024 (As Relevant)
Currently and primarily a third-party cookie-based tool, WebChoices will be updated to leverage the new ‘cookies and beyond’ API architecture, allowing for company-level, identifier-level, and category-level choices.
Like the YourAdChoices Token Tool, WebChoices 2.0 will allow consumers to input an ID (email address or phone number), make selections of some or all companies, verify the inputted ID, and communicate their choices to selected companies.
The current cookie-based version of WebChoices will continue to support the placement of opt-out cookies. However, participating companies should adopt the new functionality in WebChoices 2.0 to allow for continued, seamless cookie-less choice on the tool.
Direct integration with items 1, 2, 3 and 4 will allow companies to receive all of these signals via API. These can be stored in backend database systems or shared with Customer Data Platform (CDP) or DAA-recognized Consent Management Platform (CMP) partners, effectively allowing companies to maintain suppression lists, which can be used to update their collection and use databases on a routine (periodic) basis.
Please email Jamie Monaco at jamie@aboutads.info to begin your testing.
6 - Protect my Choices 2.0 – Test in 2024 (As Relevant)
Currently, Protect my Choices (PMC) is a browser extension intended to preserve the cookie-based choices a consumer makes on WebChoices. It “hardens” opt-out cookies so that consumer preferences are maintained regardless of whether cookies have been deleted on that browser. DAA is updating PMC to allow for continued persistent choices beyond cookies. In its new iteration, PMC 2.0 will also support extension-stored choices and preferences at the browser level.
When consumers install the newest PMC extension, PMC 2.0 will be able to read the selections made by consumers using WebChoices 2.0 and store that information in the extension.
If a consumer has previously installed PMC 2.0 and returns to WebChoices 2.0 to change preferences, then the extension would recognize those changes.
Where it is installed on a browser by the consumer, PMC 2.0 will also allow participating companies to receive a consumer’s choices in real time on that consumer’s browser.
When existing PMC users upgrade to 2.0, they will continue to benefit from the PMC’s original, legacy cookie functionality; however, these users will also enjoy the added benefit of this latest update.
The DAA urges participating companies to listen for the signals from this extension in their adtech operations early in 2024. Real-time interrogation of the PMC 2.0 extension will be available for testing in early 2024.
Please email Jamie Monaco at jamie@aboutads.info to begin testing this latest technology.
7 - About Identifiers (AboutIdentifiers.org)
The DAA has enabled a free cross-industry resource to help advertisers explain existing and new identifiers to their audiences. This new webpage, AboutIdentifiers.org, describes the benefits of relevant advertising and how consumers can gain transparency and control when available identifiers about them are deployed.
DAA encourages all participating companies to link to this new resource from any owned or partners/clients-owned privacy policies, ads and apps. It is a consumer-friendly way to educate consumers about developing, cookie-less advertising measures and to provide them with meaningful control on every device and browser they use.
Building Consumer Trust and Engagement Transcends Technology
As our industry continues to change and adapt, DAA is committed to continuing to help drive consumer engagement and build trust through transparency and control. All participating companies are expected to support these privacy-focused initiatives, as outlined above, to help consumers understand how to access the information and the control mechanisms they need and trust across new technologies, platforms, and tools.
The market is evolving, and it is time to integrate or listen for the new ‘cookies and beyond’ tools before the end of 2024. Please contact DAA today to discuss your evolving DAA responsibilities.
