Digital Advertising Alliance Brings Opt-Out Tools to Mobile Devices

The Digital Advertising Alliance may have lost interest in working with a standards body on a strategy to limit online ad tracking, but it’s still at work on its own solutions to the privacy issue.

Last week, DAA announced that it plans to launch mobile tools that will allow users to set preferences for apps’ and mobile websites’ usage of behavioral targeting. The tools will even allow users to opt out of targeted advertising.

“The mobile choice tools reflect DAA’s continued fulfillment of the promise that it has made to policymakers, industry, and, most importantly, consumers to bring transparency and control wherever and however they use the internet, reflecting the market reality that consumers and brands engage with each [other] on a variety of screens,” DAA Executive Director Lou Mastria said in a statement  (opens in a new tab).

The tools will come in two forms: an app (for Android and iOS) and a mobile-optimized version of the industry’s existing AdChoices  (opens in a new tab) program, which allows desktop web users to opt out of online tracking  (opens in a new tab).

The industry’s steps to regulate itself come as pressure is rising from privacy advocates and government officials to balance the industry’s data-focused advertising methods with  consumers’ privacy interests. In a related story, the Interactive Advertising Bureau recently  raised concerns about the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2014, a bill intended to limit the rise of “stalker apps” but which the group says would have a much wider effect than anticipated.

DAA’s new consumer tools will be made available to the public in the fall.

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