consumer privacy

There are certain privacy-related phrases companies use when they’re talking about their products that should make your antennae twitch. If you hear them, it’s a signal to ask questions.

Apple has a knack for making privacy-related product announcements that cast aspersions on the data practices of any company whose name isn’t “Apple,” and there were a handful of those.

Raashee Gupta Erry spent most of her career in the digital marketing industry at agencies and brands, including Essence and Volkswagen US. Then she took a job explaining ad tech to the Federal Trade Commission. “There’s a wind of change happening,” Gupta Erry says.

Most consumers think the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a lot broader than it is. But in a post-Dobbs world, it bears repeating: HIPAA doesn’t cover all health data, including reproductive health information collected through phones, tablets and other devices.

There’s no such thing as “compliance by obscurity,” says Sheila Colclasure, who serves as global chief digital responsibility and public policy officer at Kinesso, the mar tech unit within IPG.

Digital advertising’s biggest trade organization, the IAB, took a shot at Apple on Monday. Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework undermines advertising, according to the IAB, even as Apple builds its own ad business. “Apple is fine with advertising, as long as they get to control it on their terms,” IAB CEO David Cohen told hundreds of industry […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

The “notice and choice” model makes sense in theory, but in practice? It’s a mess. Privacy platitudes need to stop, says Jessica Lee, a partner at Loeb & Loeb. Heck, some practitioners don’t even know how online advertising works.

Earlier this week, AdExchanger asked FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya during his keynote at the NAD’s conference on advertising law in Washington, DC, why the commission decided to sue Kochava rather than any other ad tech company with a location data business. And, according to Bedoya, Kochava was singled out for a reason.

Last week, I tuned into the entire FTC forum on “surveillance capitalism” and data security – all five-plus hours of it (you’re welcome?) – and this is my main takeaway: The online advertising industry needs to find a new way to talk about itself.