In May 2020, AdExchanger published an article with the headline, “FTC Seeks Ad Tech Pros To Bone Up On The ‘Opaque’ Business Of Digital Advertising.”
The story was pitched to us by the then-director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, who was looking for two people with a deep understanding of digital advertising to join the FTC for a couple of years to help the commissioners and staff develop in-house expertise.
Raashee Gupta Erry – a digital marketer with experience at Essence, Neustar, Volkswagen US and Digitas – saw the story, applied and got the job.
More than two years later, Gupta Erry, who completed her stint at the FTC last fall, has a unique purview into the FTC’s priorities and what makes it tick.
“There’s a wind of change happening,” says Gupta Erry on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. “There is a much bigger emphasis and a desire to be more technology focused [and] more technology ready.”
The cliché has long held that technology moves too fast for regulators and lawmakers to keep up. But assuming they are not up to the task of digging into the detail and complexity isn’t a smart move.
Regulators want to get into the weeds. Just look at the FTC’s recently launched Office of Technology, which has dedicated staff and resources who exist expressly to help the commission keep up with technological change.
“There’s definitely a big movement, a big push towards being more educated,” Gupta Erry says. “And not everybody in the industry knows everything either.”
Also in this episode: Inside Uplevel, Gupta Erry’s new privacy-focused consultancy for advertisers; why using third-party pixels is an increasingly risky exercise; how regulators perceive ad tech; why the industry is stuck with the term “surveillance advertising” (for now, at least); and Gupta Erry’s dream job in another life. (It has to do with fusion fashion.)
