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IAB Public Policy & Legal Summit – Key Takeaways

April 11, 2023 — by Fiona Campbell-Webster    

At the beginning of April, I joined panel experts at IAB’s Public Policy & Legal Summit in Washington to talk Privacy Issues in CTV Advertising. Here are my key takeaways: 

There is an opportunity now as an industry to lean in to end to end collaboration for CTV/OTT privacy compliance and build a better consumer experience. 

To increase trust and transparency for the consumer as we consider how to streamline the user CTV/OTT viewing experience, we also need to build in, using privacy by design upfront, an understandable, easy to engage and simple to use, consumer experience for the consumer’s rights of notice and choice in this currently budding complex CTV/OTT environment. Sounds simple – but this is not an easy task. Commonalities for interoperability between different CTV/OTT systems need to be developed both for ease of use and streamlined transactional capabilities for businesses. Elimination of current unnecessary high technical costs and most importantly simplifying the complexity of the consumer journey for privacy, will help enable better consumer viewing, measurement, frequency capping and attribution.  

The IAB have been hard at work along with its members developing guidance, contracts and technical solutions to get the ball rolling. Here are some great resources from them to get you all started and to accelerate this work. The time to get started is now! 

Tips to get started: 

This is really complex – where do I start? First, read this whitepaper carefully it also has some great diagrams: IAB Project Crosswalk White Paper. It includes CTV/OTT Data Flows diagrams that identify complex sharing of data that is personally identifiable information in the ecosystem including from Smart TVs and OEMs to the CTV/Ott App/Publisher. 

There are new requirements for practical due diligence on ecosystem partners and vendors from US Multi-State laws to do more than just contractual reps and warranties. There are some great vendors that can help you with this work. Check out the recent collaboration between SafeGuard Privacy and the NAI for vendor management solutions. 

Make sure you know what you are collecting and processing and who has access to user data on your site. Read this article on AdExchanger to help you understand the broadening regulator approaches towards the use of pixels.  

Contractual and Technical Compliance go hand in hand. Sign up to participate in a contractual end to end solution from IAB and make sure you implement for the sharing of technical solutions. This is publisher, advertiser, intermediaries and vendor focused, so it includes everyone, and it needs everyone to achieve full end to end compliance. 

Sign up to the IAB Multi-State Privacy Agreement (MSPA) here. 

Get the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) technical integrations in place to ensure you can pass the signals before 1 July 2023. Find out more here.  

Finally, add some privacy icing on the cake! Think about what else can be done as a good player and partner in the privacy CTV/OTT ecosystem. 

Do a little bit more to move from reactive compliance to actively partnering with privacy first opportunities to create a consumer first privacy first beginning to the end and back again pathway. 

MediaMath is doing more with our focus on Trust and Transparency to help ensure that quality inventory is consumer first and privacy first by identifying privacy scored inventory through our partnership with Sourcepoint. Read more here. 

Fiona Campbell-Webster

Fiona Campbell-Webster, Esq, CIPP-E is Chief Privacy Officer at MediaMath and is a dual qualified attorney in New York and U.K. She is responsible for defining the privacy program and strategic policies and processes around privacy, data use, identity and compliance to ensure data is used globally in ethical, privacy-friendly ways that support MediaMath’s business outcomes while honoring global data protection laws and self-regulatory obligations. Fiona has provided privacy and legal advice to the AdTech industry for many years with experience on the buyside and sellside. Previously, Fiona was Head Legal Counsel and DPO at Beeswax (DSP), prior to that first and sole legal counsel and DPO at TripleLift (SSP) and started supporting AdTech working as part of a team of attorneys for Sizmek (DSP/AdServer.