Brussels, 3 December 2021 – EDAA stands ready to build on cross-stakeholder endorsement towards its self-regulatory work on advertising choices and education.
The European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA) held the first-ever hybrid edition of its annual “EDAA Summit” on 15 November, under the banner “Choices for a better future”. Such a tagline was both timely and critical. As regulation leans in, industry and technology innovation reshape the horizon, and consumers expect and demand respect for the handling of their data, the choices we make as consumers, regulators, and industry today, are the ones that will shape the future of the ecosystem.
A record attendance of over 300 leaders from across the global advertising industry and beyond – stakeholders comprising industry practitioners, trade associations, policy makers, legal counsels, consultancies, and data protection authorities – came together for an afternoon of thoughtful, open, and engaging discussion about the present and the future of trust, transparency, and control in digital advertising.
Angela Mills Wade, EDAA Chairwoman and Executive Director of the European Publishers Council, stated: “at this year’s Summit, we were confronted with the most pressing data protection issues and challenges across Europe, and even the world over, combined with Star Wars analogies and Marvel characters smashing through walls – certainly a first in any conference I’ve attended! But underlying this was a series of serious, thoughtful, critical debates that have the potential to reshape interest-based and digital advertising, as we know it. As an industry ecosystem, we are collectively redrawing the infrastructure and realigning to the consumer benefit, whilst ensuring strong data protection principles at the core. In this context, stakeholders can rally behind EDAA as the only independent cross-industry forum in Europe, to tackle the issues we all face and make choices that reflect a brighter, better future”.
On the cross-stakeholder engagement, David Barron, Director of Operations at the EDAA, commented: “Whilst discussing landmark legislative dossiers for the digital ecosystem in the form of the DSA and DMA, the policy debate over the value of tailored online advertising has become increasingly polarised in the European Parliament in recent months. With this year’s Summit we have succeeded in providing a policy-agnostic forum where attendees got to hear diverse views – we gave the floor to various stakeholders to help set the record straight.”
Interventions provided by influential MEP Eva Maydell, EPP Group rapporteur on the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act in the ECON committee, signaled the strong potential for advertising self-regulation under the auspices of the EDAA: “there is also a space for some form of industry self-regulation in our future regulatory framework. So, I would like to commend the EDAA for the work they have done on advertising choices and finding the balance between consumers and industry”. Such praise speaks to the core mission and values of the EDAA, and MEP Maydell’s intervention served as a stark reminder to companies of the need to engage and support the complementary self-regulatory system beyond the current legal requirements in Europe. In this light, EDAA is committed to go further in helping the industry respond and deliver on the regulators’ objectives, particularly in light of transparency in the draft DSA.
Moreover, whilst the online advertising industry is under heavy scrutiny from European Data Protection Authorities, the interventions of Guido Scorza of the Garante (Italian DPA) also shed further positive light on the importance of EDAA’s work and the key role that advertising self-regulation should have in the current and future regulatory frameworks: “Regulation should deal with establishing general and abstract principles at the very high level. Self-regulation should instead apply these principles to companies’ daily activities, in a concrete, accessible, easy way. This is the way to approach both the GDPR and the draft of the Digital Services Act. Both reserve ample room for self-regulation”.
Over 20 other prominent speakers in the field provided their expertise and viewpoints on the most pressing issues, including policy keynotes and panels covering the DSA, enforcement priorities of European DPAs, a review of global privacy regimes, a dive into leading industry innovation, self-regulatory best practice, and a futurist view on the value of seeking out your walls to break them down and enter a new (cookieless) world of opportunity. The Summit delivered on its promise of engaging and forward-thinking debate.
Insights from the event will be used to help shape how industry standards, through effective self-regulation, can complement regulation in this field and enhance trust with consumers.
View the event aftermovie, stakeholder interviews and pictures, here.
To learn more, and potentially support the work of the EDAA in providing meaningful transparency, choice and control to European consumers, don’t hesitate to reach out via info@edaa.eu.
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About EDAA
The European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance (EDAA) is responsible for the administration of the pan-European, cross-industry Self-Regulatory Programme on Data-Driven Advertising, enabling users, through the display of the ‘AdChoices icon’, and youronlinechoices.eu consumer portal, to access transparency and choice with regard to interest-based advertising. More information can be found at www.edaa.eu.
The EDAA Annual Summit, now in its fifth year, has become a staple calendar event within the data privacy and advertising technology fields, and is known for provoking honest, open, intellectual and critical debate, covering broad viewpoints with the ultimate objective of building trust with consumers.
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