IAB Romania and UAPR organized The Cookie Challenge – good practices in behavioral online advertising

Over 50 representatives of Romanian online advertising industry attended, on March 20th, “The Cookie Chalenge: Good practices and regulations in behavioral online advertising, an event organized by IAB Romania and supported by UAPR (Romanian Association of Advertising Agencies).

The main purpose of the event was to increase notoriety for the current legislation and to underline the advantages of using behavioral targeted online advertising.

At the event, the speakers were Dominic Lyle – General Manager EACA, Ionel Naftanaila – OBA Project Manager IAB Europe, Alin Popescu – Managing Director AvocatNet and Marius Sutu  – Project Manager Behavia.

In his presentation, Dominic Lyle discussed about the new self-regulation model and the best action ways of OBA (online behavioral advertising), Ionut Naftanaila focused on the general plan, implementation and instruments to help legislation implementation. At his turn,  Marius Sutu spoke about how to plan an OBA campaign (creating a brief, audience, websites, clients benefits), while Alin Popescu pointed out some law reviews, offered a few advises and presented some case studies.

Self-regulation actions started and supported by IAB Europe and other European associations need support also on local level. We must understand, as industry, that it is our duty to be informed about legislative initiatives and to offer, at out turn, information related to the local market. That is why we organized and we will continue to organize events during which we aim to help the industry acknowledge  the importance of self-regulating actions and the effects of a legislation that might be adopted without any self-regulation being in place. The Cookie Challenge was the 1st event of this kind, but we plan to organize meetings, round tables and debates with authorities, associations and players in online advertising industry as a whole

Ioana Anescu

Managing Director IAB Romania

OBA Framework is a frame document drafted at European online advertising industry level, through common collaboration and work of more associations in the sector. The document presents a series of good practices in the field and establishes certain principles to increase transparence on web users options in UE and South Eastern Europe, principles that are mandatory for companies and associations.

The associations that worked together to make OBA Framework support the promotion of the document on the entire advertising market. The principles of OBA aim to apply accessible standards to collect online data and to facilitate serving ads based on internet users preferences or interests.

We want to prove that the industry can self-regulate. Online industry became powerful and can act as a block. In this moment, the framework is supported by 110 companies that have activities also online

Ionel Naftanaila

OBA Project Manager IAB Europe.

According to Naftanaila, the legislation in place addresses in this moment the websites operators, advertising organizations, agencies and companies that gather total or substantial information from URLs from the EU countries, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Switzerland.

The main duties consist in explaining to the user of what happens exactly with this type of advertising. In the same time, we must offer the user the possibility to chose if he wants or not behavioral advertising

Ionel Naftanaila.

The main points of the actual framework are not to create behavioral segments for kids, obtaining express consent from consumers for data such as sexual orientation, political views and others, agencies and advertisers are acting as publishers or third parties.

Also, companies that are following the entire access from an user or companies that are and act as ISPs must inform their users and to obtain his express consent prior to collecting their data.

Behavioral targeting has better results than side-by-side advertising. Also, it achieves a better brand attitude, a higher reach (because there are collected nuggets cores from every website, but only in terms of audience) and a smaller waste

Marius Sutu

Project Manager Behavia, user of nugg.ad.

For an easier introduction and apply of OBA Framework, EDDA launched a pan-european website that is also available in Romanian. This portal offers complete information related to behavioral advertising, cookies and offers multiple options to users to manage their preferences when it comes of behavioral advertising.

IAB Romania was created in 2006 and reunites the most important companies in online advertising: media sales houses, advertising agencies, online advertising services providers and local publishers. IAB Romania is member of IAB Europe.

UAPR is a professional organization founded in 2000 that aims to protect advertising agencies interests, to help the development and professionalization of the advertising industry and to increase professional standards.