Guest · Data, identity and privacy
Charles Simon
VP of Private Advertising Standards, RTB House
Charles Simon is VP of Private Advertising Standards at RTB House, where he shapes the privacy frameworks and industry standards that govern how advertising technology respects consumer rights. He brings experience from IAB Europe and a career spent inside the organisations that write the rules digital advertising actually runs on.
About
Charles Simon is Vice President of Private Advertising Standards at RTB House, where he leads the shaping of internal and external privacy frameworks across the programmatic advertising ecosystem. With deep experience in IAB Europe and industry standards development, he works at the intersection of regulatory compliance, consumer trust, and competitive innovation.
Simon has spent his career at the intersection of advertising standards and consumer protection. His work on the Transparency and Consent Framework at IAB Europe put him at the centre of the GDPR-era transformation of how digital advertising handles consent. He has worked across European and US regulatory contexts, navigating the complexity of state-level privacy laws, walled garden data policies, and the ongoing evolution of contextual targeting.
At RTB House, his mandate is to ensure that the deep learning technology underlying the platform’s retargeting capabilities operates within frameworks that consumers can trust, regulators can respect, and clients can rely on. His test for any AI-driven advertising idea is simple: think about how you would feel as the person receiving it.
Career16 years
- 2025 to now NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) Board Member
- 2024 to now RTB House VP, Private Advertising Standards
- 2022 to 2024 Nike Senior Director, Privacy and Governance Architecture
- 2020 to 2022 Google Privacy Engineering Lead, Devices & Services
Show earlier roles: MediaMath, Oracle, NAI
- 2017 to 2019 MediaMath Director, Data Policy & Governance
- 2014 to 2016 Oracle Senior Product Manager, Privacy
- 2010 to 2014 NAI Policy & Compliance Analyst, Technology Lead
How Charles thinks3 convictions
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Privacy is brand protection, not just compliance
Most organisations treat privacy as a compliance cost. Simon’s argument is that it is a competitive asset. The brands and platforms that built genuine consent-based relationships with consumers before they were forced to are now able to do things with data that competitors cannot. The constraint became the advantage.
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This industry turns existential crises into competitive advantages
The death of the cookie was supposed to be catastrophic. Third-party signal loss was supposed to collapse programmatic. Each of these moments produced new standards, new technologies, and new ways of reaching people that did not rely on the infrastructure being replaced. Simon is bullish on the industry’s ability to adapt because he has watched it do so repeatedly.
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The human test is the most reliable check on AI-driven advertising ideas
In an era of Gen AI-enabled ad creation, the temptation is to optimise for click-through and conversion without asking whether the experience is one a person would welcome. Simon’s test is simple and impossible to automate: would you, as a human being, feel respected by this ad? That question cuts through most bad ideas fast.
