COMMENDATIONS
SWAN has won support from some significant organisations, all of whom are equally concerned about the threat of a privatised world wide web.
"SWAN solves for authentication gaps in the market and balances consumer choice and privacy with the needs of publishers and marketers. It will help bring advocacy and education to consumers, helping them to better understand data usage and build a bridge to the ad industry that funds the open web and free content.”
Michael Zacharski
CEO - ENGINE Media Exchange (EMX)
"At OpenX, we believe that a variety of solutions will emerge in a post-cookie world. As an SSP we want users, publishers, and all other entities in the space to have a choice in finding a solution that works for them. We are supportive of SWAN because we see a lot of value in how this particular solution provides the user transparency and control they don't have today. Users are able to see who accessed their stable identifier (transparency), aren't required to provide an email address (control), and can easily change or remove their identifier at any time (more control). All while meeting important adtech use cases and simplifying the user experience. As a result we find SWAN to be a very compelling offering."
Joel Meyer
Chief Architect - OpenX
"The future of an open, interoperable, and competitive web, upon which so many of us rely to access content online, relies on the availability and management of resources for the common good, not the existence of a small number of walled gardens. SWAN is a step in that direction, providing digital players with reliable, audited, and decentralized data in a way which genuinely enhances and respects consumer privacy. We are delighted to be supporting the proposal."
Tim Cowen
Chair of the Antitrust Practice at Preiskel & Co
“Digital advertising is at a pivotal point. As a leading auditor of industry data and practices, PwC are pleased to participate as an independent observer in the active discussions taking place across the industry, including those being undertaken by SWAN. Our objective is to help ensure these industry discussions balance the rights and needs of all participants, from an individual's right to privacy and transparency in how their data is used, through to brands' needs to deliver relevant advertising and publishers' needs to operate sustainable businesses.”
Sam Tomlinson
Partner - PwC
“We are particularly committed in keeping an open and interoperable web platform allowing content creators to maintain independent ad-funded activities and sustain their business while enabling users to access free content thought privacy-preserving mechanism.
(Re)gaining users' trust may be one of the biggest challenges for the open web in the near future. And we do think that open standards can contribute in building a thriving digital advertising future that ensures a level-playing field for the competition to occur and in the meantime provide users with full control over their personal data.
In this period of uncertainty with lots of fragmentation (and more to come), we strive bringing back more certainty within the digital ad-related activities by providing an all-in-one solution covering all the future addressability layers, including privacy technologies as a core component.
So when we heard about SWAN, we have seen in this initiative an echo to what we believe in as a company but also as citizens for the future of the web. It seemed obvious we will support Swan as we support any solution and/or standards with the same spirit. We are happy to join our forces to the SWAN community to build the future of our industry.”
Naïma Conton
Chief Operating Officer - Sirdata
"We see SWAN and other initiatives wrestling with similar issues as critical in framing the debate as to how we should move forward with the existing privacy and antitrust frameworks regulating activities on the open web.
As legal practitioners, we help our clients to apply these frameworks to comply with the spirit and letter of data protection laws by crafting notices, user journeys and data handling practices. In doing so, we also grapple with other laws – those of unintended consequences - which overwhelm consumers with detail and ironically disenfranchise them of informed choice.
SWAN is particularly important as it seeks to provide a solution to areas of privacy regulation which arguably still do not operate online as optimally as legislators intended. It focusses on a consent-based framework that consumers can understand and engage with, a meaningful right to be forgotten and use of reciprocal contractual commitments to build trust across the entire online value chain."
Sherif Malak
Partner - Shoosmiths
"For the Open Web to remain viable for our customers, our children and ourselves an economic model that enables it to compete with other platforms, like Google’s walled garden, is required. As a real-time data company such solutions are our “sweet spot”.
In parallel with supporting Marketers for an Open Web to pursue a regulatory remedy to the issues of competition in digital markets, we have invented SWAN to provide a technical remedy for those that share our vision."
James Rosewell
CEO - 51Degrees