Digital media has opened up exciting new worlds for the advertising industry. It has given advertisers the ability to reach audiences in new places, on new devices, in more engaging ways, and in more targeted fashion than ever before. No doubt about it: these are all good things.
But the advent of digital media has
Today’s marketing and advertising landscape may be more laden with legal tripwires, regulatory mines, sharp corners, and dead ends than ever before. Technology is definitely evolving in real time, new laws are creating a tangled web of regulation, and consumers are savvier and more in control than ever.
Fortunately, the 36th Annual BAA /
2013 is already proving to be another turbulent year for Washington D.C., and many of us can’t help but keep watching with bated breath for the latest action or debate to come out of it. And there’s no question that the regulatory and enforcement environment today is heightened across all industry sectors, even while Congress seems unable to reach agreement on any much of the legislation before it. For marketers and advertisers, the moves made by the Obama Administration on a variety of issues will have profound implications, as we saw with the sequestration debate, privacy, tax code reform, new appointees, and more.
This year’s Association of National Advertisers Advertising Law & Public Policy Conference will focus on the major issues that are keeping marketers and advertisers up at night in light of the current realities in the federal and state governments. For now, I share my excitement for the annual conference; after, I look forward to sharing my thoughts and key takeaways from what promise to be countless insightful and intriguing debates and discussions.
I sat down with Dan Jaffe, Group Executive Vice President for Government Relations for the ANA, who is a conference co-chair, featured speaker, and industry and government veteran, to discuss what to expect from this year’s conference and get a preview of his thoughts on some of the main issues.
I certainly agree that we’ve put together an outstanding program for the year. I’m particularly looking forward to the vast array of issues that will be covered. From ad tax issues to patent trolls, to privacy, to the expansion of Top Level Domains on the Internet, our conference will feature some of the major issues facing advertisers in 2013. We will also be covering the treatment of women in advertising nationally and internationally, which is an important issue that I do not think has been covered very often or very well.
I will be particularly focusing on ad taxes, the efforts of various groups to undermine the ability to carry out Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA), and the effort to explosively expand the Top Level Domain system on the Internet. Any one of these issues could severely impact the interests of the Internet and the public. An underlying theme that I try to emphasize in my speech is that there are major fundamental societal forces driving many of the challenges facing our industry. For example, the controversy over OBA would not exist without serious concerns by the public about hacking, misuse of locational data, and the sensitivity of financial and health information. Food marketing would not be under fire if not for a genuine obesity epidemic cutting across many demographics. I argue that the ad community must be proactive in responding to the threats facing us. Companies must be doing everything possible to ensure they are in compliance with current regulations and laws. Additionally, we have to commit ourselves to powerful self-regulation. Self-regulation with teeth is the only sure method for holding back overly restrictive regulations on our industry.