Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
Interactive Advertising Bureau
August 2010

In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission issued warning to the world of advertising that if advertising agencies that used behavorial advertising within their published ads did not self-regulate then the FTC would act on their behalf.  In order to self-regulate, leading ad agencies formed the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to establish industry guidelines following the principles suggested by the FTC’s “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising”.

The paper suggests 7 principles in order to self-regulate:

1. The Education Principle – Focus on educating customers on behavioral advertising.
2. The Transparency Principle – Take steps to clearly inform consumers about what is happening with collected data.
3. The Consumer Control Principle – Create a mechanism in which consumers can choose whether their data is collected or not.
4. The Data Security Principle – Collected data for behavioral advertising must be reasonably secured and data retention limited.
5. The Material Changes Principle – Agencies must acquire permission from the consumer before they change the way they are collecting data.
6. The Sensitive Data Principle – Certain data should require more restrictive practices in its collection and use and should take the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in consideration for example.
7. The Accountability Principle – Calls for all advertising agencies using behavioral advertising to put in place accountability programs to ensure the use of the established principles.

It is believed by the IAB that with these principles in place, agencies will be able to self-regulate the industry and there will be no need for government regulatory action.

You can read about the 7 principles in detail here.