In an extraordinary keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting in Florida last week, CEO David Cohen called privacy activists, academics, politicians left and right, and even Apple, of “extremists” for criticizing the advertising industry and supporting stricter privacy. legislation.
“Extremists are winning the battle of hearts and minds in Washington DC and beyond,” Cohen said. “We can’t let that happen. These extremists are political opportunists on a mission to cripple the advertising industry and eliminate it from the American economy and culture.”
The online advertising industry is seriously concerned about the momentum of privacy legislation in the United States, where five states are introducing GDPR-like rules that require consumers to register, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has pledged to crack down on tracking.
Cohen used the word “extremist” ten times in his speech, which was posted online. He also scored the argument that online tracking is used to shape behavior and society made by Shoshana Zuboff, author of the influential book The era of surveillance capitalism, as “dystopian nonsense” and “crazy”.
He took aim at FTC Chair Lina Khan’s anti-surveillance statements and, apparently trying to separate advertising from “big tech” (even though Google, Meta, and Amazon are members of the IAB), accused the regulator of endangering “the free and open”. internet” in its zeal to “punish the big players”. Last summer, the FTC promised to crack down on “commercial surveillance and lax data security practices.” An ad agency said Drums 2023 is an “inflection point”.
As for American politicians, Cohen said Amy Klobuchar (Democrat) and Ted Cruz (Republican) would “throw our industry under their campaign buses.” Both have called for more regulation of social media, although for different reasons.
He also put in Asad Ramzanali, chief of staff for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Democratic Congresswoman Anna Eshoo for calling online ads “a vehicle for misinformation and inciting speech to proliferate and hurt people.” And he hit out at Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers for claiming the industry is “part of big tech’s control over speech that limits consumer choice and promotes addiction.”
He attacked lobby group Accountable Tech as “one of the most vocal anti-ad groups trying to shut down the ad-supported internet”, accusing it of being funded by “progressive black money”. and saying that the IAB’s own lobbyists were hard at work in Washington for “serious, sensible legislation.”
Fear of an American GDPR
The US has been much more lax than Europe on data protection, but the states of Colorado, Connecticut, Utah and Virginia are following California’s lead and introducing their own GDPR-like privacy laws, and the ad industry doesn’t like it. a little. Worst-case scenario, he fears a federal privacy ruling similar to a US-wide GDPR, which has been mooted.
Last year, IAB Europe was fined €250,000 by Belgium’s DPA, which told the trade body that “legitimate interest” was not a legal basis for placing cookies on a device under its Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF). His replacement was tentatively approved earlier this month, but IAB Europe faces further rulings from the European Court of Justice over whether he is a data controller and whether his preferred consent mechanism is personal information under the GDPR.
Unsurprisingly, Cohen isn’t a fan of GDPR, saying it punishes small and medium-sized players.
In his speech, he positioned the advertising industry as a noble and liberating force that “allows World Wildlife Fund to sell environmental protection and enables the United Negro College Fund to attract contributions that support HBCUs”. He claimed publishers, platforms, brands, ad agencies, private equity and venture capital, martech and ad tech were innocent parties caught in the crossfire between regulators and big tech. , and attacked by “extremists” from all sides.
However, Cohen reserved his biggest guns for Apple, which he sees as a kind of fifth column, accusing the company of exemplifying “the cynicism and hypocrisy that underpins the mainstream extremist view.”
Apple, which is not a member of the IAB, has long sought to set itself apart from other tech giants as a unique respect for privacy. It’s debatable to what extent this marketing message is actually true: Apple is facing a number of lawsuits for violating its privacy claims, and researchers have found that Apple collects analytics data even when privacy controls are set to prevent it.
Hyperbole aside, Cohen may be on firmer ground here. Many industry observers saw the move less as an ethical statement and more as a way to shut out rivals. He accused the Cupertino company of trying “to stifle the advertising industry, just as it did the recorded music industry.”
He continued, “Apple is aiming to let them grow their ad business while rewriting the rulebook so the rest of the industry can’t compete.”
With “radicals left and right, encouraged by giants like Apple and others with a vested interest in controlling the market,” the industry faces serious challenges, Cohen said.
“We have to confront the extremists if we want to survive.”