Ethics Certified Spotlight: Philip Cowdell

Institute for Advertising Ethics • July 30, 2025

Meet Philip! A member of our Ethics Certified community and IAE Advisory Council.

Philip is the Global Chief Strategy Officer at Channel Factory, a global AdTech company focusing on Social Media. He is also part of the IAE Advisory Council!


How has IAE's certifications impacted you, your career, and your approach to ethical advertising?

Ethical behavior and decision-making have been the bedrock of my career across Publicis, WPP, and now Channel Factory. Having met Andrew at a Brand Safety Summit in NYC I was pleased to refresh my prior training and career experience, and become formally certified. 



This connection also came at a highly appropriate time when the umbrella theme of ethics is critical in the debates regarding inclusion, sustainability, responsible journalism, and AI adoption. Very timely. 

What Ethical Advertising Principles and Practices do you actively apply in your work and how?

To recap the 9 Ethical Principles: all are applied both in principle and in practice.


Principle 1. We have a collective responsibility to share a common objective of truth and high ethical standards in serving the public.


Principle 2. We have an obligation to exercise the highest personal ethics in the creation and dissemination of commercial information to consumers.


Principle 3. Its critical to distinguish paid content (ads etc) from news, editorial and entertainment, especially in the Social Media realm.


Principle 4. Any endorsements need to be subject to full disclosure and transparency.


Principle 5. All consumers should be treated fairly but this has become problematic when some communities are single out, excluded or blocked. 


Principle 6. Protecting PII is paramount.


Principle 7. We all must follow federal, state and local advertising laws, and cooperate with industry self-regulatory programs.


Principle 8. Organizations should ensure safe spaces for raising ethical concerns.


Principle 9. Transparency and full disclosure are fundamental to building trust. 



Why is ethics important for advertising?

It is the foundation for all successful advertising: Ethics engender trust, and consumers are reluctant to buy products and services from companies they don't know and trust. Equally they are more likely to buy from those they do trust. 



What are some of the biggest ethical challenges you see in advertising today and how do you think these challenges can be overcome?

Too little transparency and clarity in digital advertising; an increasingly un-moderated content landscape; exclusion (and even vilification) of some topics and communities all combine to make it a challenging workplace and marketplace.



Time to shine a light; show the risks; and highlight the rewards from committing to ethical advertising. 

We want to highlight you too! Fill out this form to be featured on our Ethics Certified Spotlight.

Join our growing Ethics Certified community!

Click the shields below to learn

more & get certified.

Share

Bulletin #9: Momentum Grows: Leaders Unite to Build Trust in Advertising

By Logan Chrisinske • November 20, 2025
Building Trust at Every Touchpoint The Institute for Advertising Ethics is gaining momentum, propelled by the success of our October Global Ethics Day in New York. Across participants and panelists alike, IAE’s Ethics Day affirmed a growing consensus that trust is now becoming operational, measurable, teachable, and scalable throughout the advertising and media ecosystem. Global Ethics Day 2025: Building Trust at Every Touchpoint The Liberty Room at Frankfurt Kurnit was filled on October 15 as leaders from industry, government, civil society and academia united for IAE Ethics Day 2025. Delegates from the U.S. Government, ANA Ethics Center, Microsoft, Kenvue, Uber, LinkedIn, Google LLC, Yahoo Inc., Accenture, Dentsu, Paul Weiss, Mastercard, and many others came together around a single, urgent theme: advancing the creation of scalable ethics standards to restore trust across the $1.5 trillion advertising and media industry, especially amid the rise of AI. The work is well underway, led by leaders shaping an open, validated, multi-stakeholder standard, one that delivers transparency, interoperability, verifiability, and broad adoption. Highlights included: “The future of advertising depends not only on innovation but on trust. Ethics shouldn't be understood as a constraint on innovation, rather as a catalyst for it." -Dr. Juan Mundel, Editor, Journal of Advertising Education. Dr. Juan Mundel speaks about rebuilding trust in Advertisin g “We need to create a culture where people can ask questions and where we prioritize ethics.” -Dr. Anna McAlister, Director of Curriculum and Assessment, IAE Experts highlight the role of ethics education and self-regulation in the Advertising Industry “Trust is the new currency in our industry. Without it, even the most creative campaigns can’t sustain real impact.” -Ty Heath, Director and co-founder of the B2B Institute, LinkedIn Fireside Trust Performance and Ethics in Action “People tend to believe computers are smarter than we are, which makes us less likely to question their output.” -Dr. Dana LaFon, U.S. Government Panel Explores Global Ethical Frameworks Guiding AI and Advertising “AI knows, but AI doesn’t think and AI doesn’t feel. That’s a line that’s helpful for me.” -Esther Uhalte Cisneros, Head of eCommerce & Retail Sales, Germany, Google Experts Debate “Where to Draw the Line” in Advertising Ethics, AI and Authenticity “Legal is [...] the floor and ethics is the ceiling. Even if something is legally correct, it may not be ethically right to do.” -Peri Fluger, General Counsel, Ruder Finn Building a Culture of Compliance: From Policy to Practice

Building a Culture of Compliance: From Policy to Practice

By Logan Chrisinske • November 3, 2025
At the Global Ethics Day session hosted by the Institute for Advertising Ethics, legal and communications leaders from Uber, LinkedIn and Ruder Finn joined attorney Jeffrey Greenbaum of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz to discuss how companies can translate ethical principles into practice. Greenbaum opened by noting that ethical advertising often goes beyond legal compliance. “Even if you communicate truthful information to consumers, but you communicate it in a way that’s misleading, that in and of itself can be false advertising,” he said. Jess Smith, associate general counsel at Uber, said ethics should be embedded in company culture, not just policy. “It’s not just who the brand is — it’s what actions they take out in the world,” she said.

Panel Explores Global Ethical Frameworks Guiding AI and Advertising

By Logan Chrisinske • October 31, 2025
At the Global Ethics Day session hosted by the Institute for Advertising Ethics, panelists explored how ethical frameworks—Western and non-Western alike—shape the future of artificial intelligence and advertising. John C. Havens, a leading AI ethics expert and author, opened the discussion by contrasting Western “dualism” with indigenous and collective ethical traditions. “In the West, binary code—1 and 0—is based on dualism,” he said. “But traditions like Ubuntu ethics remind us, ‘I am because we are.’ When you take the best of Western thinking and apply what it means to be in community, you get the best of both worlds.” Alayna Kennedy, a data scientist and AI governance leader at MasterCard, emphasized the importance of turning abstract ethics into practical systems. “The real challenge is how to make fairness real—how to take a word on a page and turn it into a change in your product that impacts a real person,” she said. She added that MasterCard takes a “risk-based” approach to AI governance, focusing on identifying and mitigating potential harms while enabling innovation.