advertising law

Mary Engle is EVP of policy at BBB National Programs, a nonprofit organization that’s helping keep self-regulation of the ad industry alive. She’s also spent more than three decades with the FTC. In this episode, Engle gets into the weeds on “commercial surveillance,” the nitty-gritty of ad disclosures, the FTC’s case against Kochava and more.

The FTC enforces truth in advertising laws with special attention to ads that claim particular benefits to a person’s health or their bank account. But the FTC can only bring so many cases to trial. Which is where the National Advertising Division comes in.

Although the Federal Trade Commission has historically been a fan of the ad industry governing itself, it’s been making moves to signal that the commission might start to reject self-regulatory practices, at least on the privacy front.