Turning a large ship
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