New York, February 7, 2022 - For the last three years, the industry has been developing alternatives to third-party cookies and other identifiers disrupted by consumer privacy approaches taken by browsers, operating systems, and new privacy regulations across the globe. Progress has been made to understand and analyze privacy requirements. It has become increasingly evident that we need a comprehensive set of new standards and technologies to support privacy-centric addressability and consumer data security.
In support of this, IAB Tech Lab, the digital advertising technical standard-setting body, announced the newly formed Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Working Group. This new workstream invites developers working on advanced cryptography, data scientists, privacy and security systems engineers, and others in the digital advertising community to come together to develop privacy-enhancing standards and software tools for the digital advertising industry.
“In 2020, we launched Project Rearc as a global call to action to ‘re-architect’ digital marketing, and since then, we’ve been developing a portfolio of solutions to support addressability and the sustainability of an ad-funded internet,” said Shailley Singh, Senior Vice President, Product, IAB Tech Lab. “As we move forward into the new phases and approaches to this challenge, our Privacy Enhancing Technologies Working Group will be essential to enabling addressability solutions that are inherently private and data secure to ensure consumer anonymity across the digital advertising landscape.”
“Addressability powers the Internet. PETs are one solution that enable addressability and measurement, which sustain the free and open Internet, to be able to continue in less invasive ways that ensure consumer privacy,” said Steve Silvers, SVP & GM, Marketing Solutions – Identity, Neustar.
PETs are sophisticated technologies currently employed by enterprises within the insurance and financial industries used to maximize data security and minimize the use of personal data. The integration of such technology within the advertising industry will instill confidence in upholding user privacy, preserving the security of first-party data, and fostering safe data management.
“We are investing in PETs because they have the potential to play an important role in the evolution of E-commerce and overall contribute to a thriving open internet,” said Todd Parsons, CPO at Criteo.
“We believe that PETs are a critical innovation to support the next era of digital advertising, which is why we are excited to collaborate with some of the best minds in the industry to ideate, develop, and deploy new standards and solutions to support privacy-preserving personalized advertising,” said Dennis Buchheim, VP, Advertising Ecosystem, Meta.
Find out more about Tech Lab’s PETs initiative and upcoming educational webinars here.
About IAB Technology Laboratory
Established in 2014, the IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) is a non-profit consortium that engages a member community globally to develop foundational technology and standards that enable growth and trust in the digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, marketers, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; ad experiences and measurement; and programmatic effectiveness. Its work includes the OpenRTB real-time bidding protocol, ads.txt anti-fraud specification, Open Measurement SDK for viewability and verification, VAST video specification, and Project Rearc initiative for privacy-centric addressability. Board members/companies are listed at https://dev.iabtechlab.com/about-the-iab-tech-lab/tech-lab-leadership/. For more information, please visit https://dev.iabtechlab.com.
IAB Tech Lab Media Contacts
Kate Tumino / Brittany Tibaldi
212-896-1252 / 347-487-6794
ktumino@kcsa.com / btibaldi@kcsa.com