Trustworthy Advertising in the Time of AI
Bulletin 14 | Fall 2026
October 12 Boardroom Briefing at Omnicom
On Monday October 12th the Institute for Advertising Ethics will convene Elements of Intention: Trustworthy Advertising in the Age of Agentic AI, a boardroom briefing kindly hosted by Omnicom in New York. 50 senior invited leaders across brands, technology, law, liability theory, policy, and academia will regroup and collaborate for the second of a series on the governance of increasingly autonomous advertising.
The October 12 forum builds on the first working session at Kurnit Klein & Selz, held April 22, which framed the legal and ethical risks of AI advertising. This session advances that work into the design of practical governance.
Participants will examine the six layers of IAE’s proposed AI Advertising Trust Stack. They will test the framework against realistic advertising scenarios, working directly with senior peers to develop meaningful guidance for their organizations.
The forum will also present work from the IEEE Standards Association Industry Connections Group, chaired by IAE President Andrew Susman and IAE Director of Curriculum and Assessment, Dr. Anna McAlister as Vice Chair and including 40 industry volunteers. This work connects advertising’s governance challenges with the engineering expertise of the IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization, with more than 500,000 members worldwide.
Participation is by invitation. IAE has reserved 10 complimentary seats for the public. To request an October 12 invitation,contact info@iaethics.org.
New Evidence for Ethics Certification
Towson University’s Christopher Vardeman compared two sections of the same advertising law and ethics course, taught by the same instructor. One completed IAE’s Certified Ethical Advertising Scholar (CEAS) training before the final assessment; the other had not yet taken it. Among the 50 students analyzed, the CEAS group recorded larger average gains on both measures of moral reasoning, with statistically significant improvements within that group.
Vardemann’s full study is the third peer-reviewed study supporting the educational value of IAE certification. It follows 2024 research by Erin Schauster at the University of Colorado Boulder and by Anna McAlister, Jef Richards, and Aileen Torrance, examining moral reasoning, ethical attitudes, and confidence.
AIRS the Advertising Incident Reporting System Builds a Shared Record for Advertising
Incident reporting and review are established practices in aviation, health care, software operations, and cybersecurity.
IAE’s Advertising Incident Reporting System (AIRS) brings that discipline to advertising. It connects reports from regulatory, legal, self-regulatory, industry, and public sources into a central, increasingly comprehensive record. By linking incidents to subsequent developments, AIRS allows readers to follow cases over time and assess how organizations responded.
Professionals can use this evidence to strengthen training and controls; the public can better understand reported concerns and responses; and regulators and academics can examine patterns across cases. For AI advertising, the record can inform independent evaluations and testing before and after deployment, guiding improvements to safeguards and governance.
The Necessity of Credibility
IAE Principle 11 calls on professionals to participate in credible, independent, and accountable self-regulatory mechanisms, and to help develop or improve them where gaps remain. IAE’s Governance Lab is developing modern forms of audited self-regulation.
Its 21st Century Audited Self-Regulation Model connects professional education and internal controls with incident reporting, periodic review, corrective mechanisms, and external monitoring. Education remains the foundation: accountable systems depend on people equipped to exercise judgment and act.
Leading frontier AI developers are reportedly planning a standards authority inspired by FINRA. For IAE’s work on audited self-regulation, FINRA is the established model: industry rules backed by compliance examinations, enforcement powers, and SEC oversight.
Credibility requires independent review with access to evidence and the freedom to reach unwelcome conclusions. When controls fail, organizations must correct them and demonstrate that the correction occurred. IAE’s Governance Lab is developing the governance models needed to put those obligations into practice, and at no taxpayer expense.
The Institute for Advertising Ethics is a public-interest educational foundation building the capacity, standards, and governance required for trustworthy advertising in the age of AI.
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