G4(c) Impact assessment: Targeted advertising

The company should conduct regular, comprehensive, and credible due diligence, such as through robust human rights impact assessments, to identify how all aspects of its targeted advertising policies and practices affect users’ fundamental rights to freedom of expression and information, to privacy, and to non-discrimination, and to mitigate any risks posed by those impacts.

Elements:

1. Does the company assess freedom of expression and information risks associated with its targeted advertising policies and practices?
2. Does the company assess privacy risks associated with its targeted advertising policies and practices?
3. Does the company assess discrimination risks associated with its targeted advertising policies and practices?
4. Does the company conduct additional evaluation whenever the company’s risk assessments identify concerns?
5. Do senior executives and/or members of the company’s board of directors review and consider the results of assessments and due diligence in their decision-making?
6. Does the company conduct assessments on a regular schedule?
7. Are the company’s assessments assured by an external third party?
8. Is the external third party that assures the assessment accredited to a relevant and reputable human rights standard by a credible organization?

Board of directors — Board-level oversight should involve members of the board having direct oversight of issues related to freedom of expression and privacy. This does not have to be a formal committee, but the responsibility of board members in overseeing company practices on these issues should be clearly articulated and disclosed on the company’s website.

Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA)/assess/assessment — HRIAs are a systematic approach to due diligence. A company carries out these assessments or reviews to see how its products, services, and business practices affect the freedom of expression and privacy of its users.

For more information about Human Rights Impact Assessments and best practices in conducting them, see this special page hosted by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: https://business-humanrights.org/en/un-guiding-principles/implementation-tools-examples/implementation-by-companies/type-of-step-taken/human-rights-impact-assessments

The Danish Institute for Human Rights has developed a related Human Rights Compliance Assessment tool (https://hrca2.humanrightsbusiness.org), and BSR has developed a useful guide to conducting a HRIA: http://www.bsr.org/en/our-insights/bsr-insight-article/how-to-conduct-an-effective-human-rights-impact-assessment

For guidance specific to the ICT sector, see the excerpted book chapter (“Business, Human Rights and the Internet: A Framework for Implementation”) by Michael Samway on the project website at: http://rankingdigitalrights.org/resources/readings/samway_hria.

Senior executives — CEO and/or other members of the executive team as listed by the company on its website or other official documents such as an annual report. In the absence of a company-defined list of its executive team, other chief-level positions and those at the highest level of management (e.g., executive/senior vice president, depending on the company) are considered senior executives.

Targeted advertising — Targeted advertising, also known as “interest-based advertising,” “personalized advertising,” or “programmatic advertising,” refers to the practice of delivering tailored ads to users based on their browsing history, location information, social media profiles and activities, as well as demographic characteristics and other features. Targeted advertising relies on vast data collection practices, which can involve tracking users’ activities across the internet using cookies, widgets, and other tracking tools, in order to create detailed user profiles.

Third party – A “party” or entity that is anything other than the user or the company. For the purposes of this methodology, third parties can include government organizations, courts, or other private parties (e.g., a company, an NGO, an individual person).

Indicator guidance: Targeted advertising can have adverse affects on human rights, specifically on users’ rights to freedom of information, freedom of information, and freedom from discrimination. Discrimination occurs when platforms allow third-party advertisers to show different advertisements to different users on the basis of disclosed and inferred information, including membership in protected categories (race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, health, disability, etc.). Discrimination need not be illegal or immediately harmful to result in harmful effects at scale, such as at the population level or over the course of an individual’s lifetime. Considering the fact that targeted advertisements are less transparent than other forms of advertisement and companies’ significant financial incentives to deploy the technology quickly, these potential rights harms need to be considered in risk assessments.

This indicator examines whether companies disclose if they conduct robust, regular, and accountable human rights risk assesments of the impact of targeted advertising on users’ fundamental rights to freedom of expression and information, privacy, and non-discrimination. These assessments should be part of the company’s formal, systematic due diligence activities that are aimed at ensuring that a company’s decisions and practices do not cause, contribute to, or exacerbate human rights harms. Assessments enable companies to identify possible risks of targeted advertising policies and practices on users’ human rights and to take steps to mitigate possible harms if they are identified.

Note that this indicator does not expect companies to publish detailed results of their human rights impact assessments, since assessments may include sensitive information. Rather, it expects that companies should disclose that they conduct HRIAs and provide information on what their HRIA process encompasses.

• Company CSR/sustainability reports
• Company human rights policy
• Reports from third-party assessors or accreditors
• Global Network Initiative assessment reports
• Company advertising policies