The CMO Guide to Data Ethics in Practice

This guide comes at a time when new WFA research shows that 90% of CMOs at multinational companies say data ethics is a priority for their organisation, yet half still struggle to understand what this means when it comes to the processes and practices they need to apply both internally and across their marketing supply chains.

 The objective of the guide is to advance 20 actions every CMO can take to drive more ethical data practices and propel a more responsible path forward for the digital ad industry. We believe these are a crucial first step to better harnessing the effectiveness of data-driven marketing and preserving its license to operate, now and in the future.

What’s in the guide?

The guide puts forward 20 actions CMOs can take to address 4 key challenges:

1. Holding third-party partners and suppliers to account for the ethical collection and use of data;
2. Transitioning to more ethical models of digital advertising which focus less on third-party data and tracking;
3. Embracing AI and machine-learning technologies without compromising trust, safety or inclusivity;
4. Fostering a culture of ethics internally which inspires the organisation to do the right thing with data.

The launch of the guide will also kickstart a new data ethics workstream within WFA, aimed at helping policy, legal, marketing and media professionals operationalise the recommendations in this guide.

If you’d like to get involved, please reach out to Gabrielle Robitaille at g.robitaille@wfanet.org.