Ad Tech

Ahh, summer. A time for hot dogs, swimming pools, and software developer conferences. For third-party application developers to deliver new tools with the best features for the lucrative fall quarter, they must have access to all the APIs and tools by the summer before. This has meant that early summer has become known as a […]

Apple’s important mandatory requirements affecting iOS apps are about to kick in, and Google’s new requirements for publishers and advertisers have just gone into effect. Accurately implementing these requirements calls for close cooperation between the legal, privacy, and ad ops teams. Apple’s Privacy Manifests At WWDC 2023, Apple announced privacy manifests, signatures for SDKs, and […]

This week, the Future of Privacy Forum released Advertising in the Age of Data Protection: Background for a Proposed Risk-Utility Framework for Novel Advertising Solutions (v 1.0), which will be open for Public Comment until May 26, 2024. The digital advertising industry is in the midst of a sea change. Around the world, privacy regulators […]

The privacy laws of both Colorado and California require organizations to recognize Universal Opt-Out Mechanisms (UOOMs), a tool through which a person can invoke their opt out rights broadly across all the websites they visit. While California has required responding to certain UOOMs since July 2021, the Colorado Attorney General has only recently approved their […]

With contributions from Aaron Massey, FPF Senior Policy Analyst and Technologist, Keir Lamont, Director for U.S. Legislation, and Tariq Yusuf, FPF Policy Intern Several technologies can help individuals configure their devices to automatically opt out of web services’ requests to sell or share personal information for targeted advertising. Seven state privacy laws require that organizations […]

On September 27 and 28, 2021, the Swedish Data Protection Forum (Forum för Dataskydd) hosted the 2021 edition of the Nordic Privacy Arena (“Operationalising Data Privacy – Challenges, best practices, and success stories”) in Stockholm, Sweden. This hybrid event brought together privacy practitioners, watchdogs, and academics to debate some of the most pressing issues regarding […]

Law and legislation take the lead in setting standards for protecting personal data, but the policies and norms established by companies also play a central role. This has been the case particularly for global platforms providing the services used by billions in the course of daily life. Apple’s 2020 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) previewed a […]

This morning, Facebook announced that they will begin rolling out new requirements for its “Custom Audiences” targeting tool for advertisers. These updates are a useful step towards creating better user understanding of data flows both on Facebook and in the broader web, and enhancing the accountability of advertisers who use custom marketing lists.

In the world of consumer privacy, including the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile data, and advertising technologies (“Ad Tech”), it can often be difficult to measure real-world impact and conceptualize individual harms and benefits. Fortunately, academic researchers are increasingly focusing on these issues, leading to impressive scholarship from institutions such as the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science, UC Berkeley School of Information, and many others, including non-profits and think tanks.

The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) released its 2018 Code of Conduct yesterday, consolidating the rules for online and mobile behavioral advertising (interest-based advertising). NAI, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, is the leading self-regulatory association for digital advertising, with over 100 members and a formalized internal review mechanism.