”The report ... is a bit of an...

"The report ... is a bit of an odd read,” said Direct Marketing Association Vice President-Government Affairs Rachel Thomas in a Wednesday night blog post response to an online advertising security report released Thursday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (http://bit.ly/1lHA1b9). The report -- spurred by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the subject of a subcommittee hearing Thursday -- “warns against ‘dangerous third parties,’ and ‘invasive cookies,’ and calls for ‘circuit breakers’ to protect consumers,” Thomas said. “It goes on to say that the online advertising industry is complex and hard to understand.” It’s a misleading portrayal, Thomas said. “Yikes. It’s as though the entire Internet -- that complicated series of tubes -- is devoid of self-regulation,” she said. “Good thing that reality is a much prettier picture.” Thomas highlighted the benefits of Digital Advertising Alliance’s self-regulatory program, about which Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., was skeptical in Thursday’s hearing. “The DAA program has expanded to cover the collection and use of Multi-Site Data across non-Affiliate sites over time, as well as to provide guidance for data collection in mobile environments,” she said. “Unlike legislation, which is static and runs the risk of codifying practices that may become out-of-date even before a bill turns into law, industry self-regulation is nimble by its very nature and thus better suited to provide protections in cutting-edge, fast-evolving areas like online advertising.” DAA Executive Director Lou Mastria testified at the hearing about the program. Thomas said other senators, including Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., expressed support during the hearing for this industry-led approach to combating malicious online advertising.