The Association of National Advertisers and member marketers have begun discussing an industry self-regulatory body to handle social media issues and disputes, plus creating a new marketer council and “bill of rights” for brands and consumers covering such issues.

The efforts spring from a virtual meeting last month of the ANA’s CMO Growth Council to set an agenda for 2022. Many marketers expressed concerns about recent social media controversies reported in The Wall Street Journal and "60 Minutes" involving Meta and its Facebook and Instagram platforms, said Nick Primola, executive VP and head of the chief marketing officer practice for the ANA. And while all the ideas are preliminary, marketers plan to start developing them further this month, he said.

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Among presenters to the roughly 200 CMOs in virtual attendance last month was Eric Reicin, CEO of BBB National Programs, whose National Advertising Division adjudicates disputes from marketers over ad claims and sometimes launches independent investigations. The NAD lacks enforcement authority, but participating marketers agree to abide by its recommendations. Those who don’t comply with them can be referred for enforcement to the Federal Trade Commission, former staffers of which work for the organization.

A new body to oversee social media content moderation and monetization issues could be akin to expansions of the BBB National Programs’ programs over the years to cover children’s advertising and direct marketers.

Reicin in an interview described his discussions with CMOs as a look at “the art of the possible of independent industry self-regulation and how CMOs and other like-minded stakeholders could come together just like they did in 1971 [to form the NAD]. I look forward to a robust debate with all the different stakeholders as to what options of the various models are.”

The ANA and social platforms, particularly Meta, have called for some kind of national social media regulatory framework for years, but action and specifics have been lacking. The result is that social platforms often manage their own self-regulatory systems.

An industry self-regulatory body would be “different than [Meta CEO] Mark Zukerberg saying the word ‘self-regulation,’ or ‘I’m going to take care of business myself,’” said one person familiar with the ANA’s discussions. An industry body would also go beyond the ANA handling matters on its own, because the BBB National Programs is independent of any industry segment.

“While we can’t speak to the specifics of this proposal, we have always welcomed regulation that set guidelines for addressing today’s toughest challenges on the internet,” said a Meta spokesman. “Meta is committed to collaborating with the industry to ensure people and businesses can safely express themselves online.”

He pointed to comments from Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, last month calling for an industry body to determine best practices on such questions as verifying age, designing age-appropriate experiences and building parental controls – with input from “civil society, parents and regulators to create standards that are high and protections that are universal.”

More concrete plans on the ANA’s social media agenda are likely to emerge by the time the group holds its annual Media Conference March 2-4 (currently planned as a hybrid event based in Orlando), said Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at Procter & Gamble and ANA chair. Any move to create a social media self-regulatory body would likely also involve the 4A’s and other industry organizations, he said. But he gave the NAD model high marks for its work in dealing with ad claim disputes.

“What we’re looking at on an industry level is how to work across multiple groups, including the ANA, 4A’s and BBB” as well as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and World Federation of Advertisers, to “look at self-regulation,” Pritchard said.

An ANA-led social media council and bill of rights would in some ways duplicate efforts by GARM, launched three years ago. But it would be different in that it’s U.S. focused and led by marketers, while GARM is made up of social and other media platforms and agencies as well as marketers, Primola said. Social platforms were involved in some of the CMO Growth Council’s discussions last month, he said, but excluded from others.

Marketers involved with GARM tend to be global giants such as P&G, Unilever and Mars, Primola said. One goal of the ANA’s social media council would be to give a larger group of “mid-tier marketers who really make up the bulk of the industry” access to communication with social platforms that they don’t get now, he said.

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The social media initiatives are the most interesting and potentially controversial pieces of a broader agenda for 2022 that the CMO Growth Council set last month. Other priorities for this year include closing the gap with better measurement tools, particularly ones affordable for companies of all sizes, to link creative effectiveness with business results.

Nearly 75% of the council’s CMOs agreed on a need for mechanisms to optimize martech options, something that should be served by the release later this year of the industry’s first glossary of martech terms for marketing procurement. All the CMOs agreed there’s a “critical need for a better pipeline to attract new talent and retain existing marketers, Primola said. And 63% of CMOs agreed that the marketing industry needs to move diversity, equality and inclusion from being an “extra credit” issue for companies to a top commercial priority.