CAN – Conscious Advertising Network

CAN – Conscious Advertising Network 743 496 Claudia Velilla

The Conscious Advertising Network (CAN) has launched with the aim of taking a stand against unethical practices in advertising.

Last week, CitizenMe joined CAN’s launch event as part of the 30 organisations that have signed up to the movement! We’re strong believers of CAN’s mission to stop advertising abuse by highlighting the conscious choices advertisers and agencies can make to ensure good practice. We contributed to this by writing one of the six manifestos presented by CAN: more specifically, the one on ‘informed consent’.

At CitizenMe, we support CAN’s belief that brands and agencies are capable of consciously changing the way they operate and the content they produce, to create better communication flows for all. And that is why CAN has created six manifestos outlining the main points of concern and steps that companies can take to promote ethical practice: anti ad-fraud, diversity, informed consent, hate speech, children’s wellbeing and fake news. They don’t specify where brands should or shouldn’t advertise but rather encourage companies to decide what is and is not acceptable to them.

CAN’s co-founder, Jake Dubbins, addressed UN officials regarding the part advertising plays in funding fake news and hate speech, especially in respect to immigration content. He called upon the UN to “help ensure the ethics catch up with the technology of modern advertising, to help introduce the work of the CAN to business and advertisers and to encourage them to sign up to consciousadnetwork.com”.

Informed consent

CitizenMe contributed to the writing of the ‘informed consent’ manifesto because we believe that advertising should work for everyone, from people online, to the advertiser, the publishers whose revenue relies on this system, and the agencies and adtech companies who create compelling, well targeted ads.

We believe that we’ll be more effective if we demonstrate respect for people by engaging them in the ‘value exchange’ between advertising & content, and promoting informed consent.

We are very excited to see CAN launch and flourish, and view it as a fundamental part of the Internet. At CitizenMe, we’re all about making the internet truly ethical and sustainable. We are ensuring that all our customers get a fair and ethical value for their private data. And by so doing, we ensure a strong future for organisations by making sure that their insights, innovation and AI programmes have data ethics at their core.

You can sign up to be a member on their website here.

Join us as a Citizen or client today, or if you have any questions or would like more information, don’t hesitate to contact us at hello@citizenme.com.

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