Best Practice for Digital Marketing

In what is one of the most significant and broad collaborations within the marketing industry to date, the Australian Digital Advertising Alliance, of which ADMA is a founding member, has released the Australian Best Practice Guideline for Online Behavioural Advertising.

The Guideline has been developed by leading industry associations and industry participants to set a best practice framework for organisations engaged in Third Party Online Behavioural Advertising in recognition of the fact that Third Party Online Behavioural Advertising is a relatively new type of advertising and that some consumers are not aware that online behavioural advertising occurs.

The Guideline has been created to build community confidence and understanding in online behavioural advertising and works in conjunction with the already existing and strong Australian privacy law to ensure that individual privacy is not compromised.

The Guideline is accompanied by a consumer education website, www.youronlinechoices.com.au, that includes a range of resources to help consumers explore and understand what online behavioural advertising is and what it isn’t. In addition to the tools the website allows consumers a choice mechanism if they do not want to receive ads generated by Third Party Online Behavioural Advertising. Exercising this choice doesn’t mean that consumers won’t receive ads online it means that the ads wont be served based on previous browsing history of the device that the consumer is using.

The Australian Best Practice Guideline for Online Behavioural Advertising contains seven principles which introduce important consumer mechanisms and have been designed to build consumer confidence and trust in interest-based adverting.

A summary of the seven principles follows:

I. Personal Information and Third Party OBA

Third Parties who want to combine OBA Data with Personal Information must treat the OBA Data as it if is Personal Information and in accordance with the Privacy Act.

II. Providing Clear Information to Users

Requirement to provide a clear notice for consumers about which data is collected, how it is collected and what it is used for.

III. User choice over OBA

Consumers to be able to make a choice as to whether or not they consent to the collection of data for OBA and given clear user-friendly options to manage their ad choices.

IV. Keeping Data Secure

Companies must ensure data is stored securely and is only kept as long as it fulfils a legitimate business need or as required by law.

V. Careful Handling of Sensitive Segmentation

OBA categories uniquely designed to target children under 13 will not be created.

Companies seeking to use OBA in relation to Sensitive Market Segments must obtain explicit consent.

VI. Educating Users

Companies to provide easily accessible, user-friendly information about OBA.

A consumer education website providing consumer friendly non-technical information on OBA has been developed by industry.

VII. Being Accountable

All businesses are accountable to uphold the principles in the Guideline, develop easily accessible mechanisms to consumers to lodge complaints directly to companies and commit to an ongoing review of the Guideline and its implementation.

Download the full Guideline