According to the joint press release, the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are "working together to develop enhanced self-regulatory principles for online behavioral advertising in order to address privacy concerns and to increase consumers' trust and confidence in how online information is gathered and used." Christopher Hosford in BtoBOnline writes,
The announcement of the joint effort took place on the same day that two consumer advocacy groups, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, asked the FTC to investigate behavioral targeting practices aimed at users of mobile phones and requested regulations to make it easier for mobile phone users to control how information about them is used.
As with other self-regulatory efforts in the past, this effort is likely intended to preempt any legislation that could impose greater restrictions on how US companies (including the groups' members) utilize personal information for behavioral advertising, as happened in 1998 when the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was passed in response to concerns raised by FTC and others over the collection of information from children under 13.
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