DAAC Summit 2026 Recap
The DAAC was pleased to host its 2026 Summit in downtown Toronto on September 25. This year’s theme, “Strength Through Collaboration,” reflected a central idea: navigating the challenges of responsible digital advertising requires partnership.
The day began with an overview of DAAC updates from the past 12 months. For the first time, the global DAA network hosted an event during Cannes Lions and participated in the week’s festivities. Despite the severe heatwave, we were fortunate to attend many critical industry conversations and contribute to the learning by hosting our own event at La French Connexion. In July, we also welcomed the DAA network to Montreal to plan technical development priorities for our tools over the coming year.
The Digital Advertising Alliance has also added the AdChoices Signal to Prebid.js, one of the industry’s most widely used programmatic advertising frameworks. Publishers that adopt the new module can transmit a consumer’s interest-based advertising preference signal through the header-bidding process, helping participating companies recognize and honour those choices. For Canadian organizations, this development offers another way to support transparency, choice and accountable data use as advertising technologies evolve.
We also announced plans to extend the AdChoices program to interest-based gambling advertising, to enhance transparency and consumer control in this sector. The proposed initiative would provide iGaming operators registered with the AGCO and operating under an agreement with iGaming Ontario with a way to distinguish their interest-based advertising and connect consumers with safer gambling resources.
The day also featured a lively discussion about Bill C-36 with Joanna Fine from Osler, followed by a panel on navigating privacy in marketing amongst your organization’s internal teams. The panel explored practical ways teams can work together to operationalize privacy requirements.
The Didomi team then shared practical guidance on consent banners at a time when privacy regulators are looking beyond surface-level compliance and examining whether privacy programs actually work in practice. The Canadian Marketing Association followed with research, in partnership with Signal49, on marketing’s value and contribution to Canada’s GDP.
The Federation for Internet Alerts introduced attendees to its work, explaining how it uses digital advertising infrastructure to deliver weather and missing-person alerts to the public.
The day closed with two final sessions. The first was a CASL-focused talk about de-risking email practices, followed by an insightful session on how everything these days is political, and how brands can use tactics found in political advertising to garner consumer attention.
Thank you to our speakers, sponsors (Didomi and Google) and all attendees for contributing to such a thoughtful and engaging day.
Important: AdChoices participants were reminded to submit their self-attestation forms to Ad Standards before the end of the year!