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As 2026 got underway, high-stakes battles extended beyond the football field as the Insights Association's advocacy blitz deployed on a fast-moving play-action package of federal and state privacy legislation (some helpful, some terribly harmful), emerging AI regulation, census funding and policy battles, and more. We’re highlighting where IA is shaping legislation and regulation to champion the insights industry at a critical moment on the policy calendar.

As 2025 ended, the Insights Association reflected on a year of sustained advocacy victories and ongoing challenges across consumer privacy, data security, artificial intelligence, taxation, and more policy issues directly affecting the insights industry. This final Fighting for You update of the year highlights where we successfully held the line, where new risks are emerging, and how your support positions us to continue the fight in 2026.

Amidst all the advocacy wildfires for the insights industry, the Insights Association found significant wins on federal tax reporting thresholds, and support for professional insights education. Other legal, regulatory and legislative developments in July included heightened enforcement of data privacy and security rules, evolving policies on artificial intelligence, developments in health care, new state laws on non-compete agreements, challenges to the classification of research subjects as in...

June brought lots of sizzling policy developments for the insights industry -- some promising, others challenging. Thankfully, the Insights Association was right in the thick of it. Let’s look at some wins on privacy issues and political polling, a troubling GDPR case in Europe, lots of new guidance on privacy, AI, HR, and email laws, developments on indirect costs in federally-funded research, and more.

While northerly climes were frosting over at the tail end of 2024, the Insights Association took a sharp look at the prior year in tax policy, privacy and artificial intelligence, while scoping out President Trump’s new Administration. We also covered an array of privacy, data security, telephone and other legislation and regulatory moves impacting the insights industry in December.

As leaves accumulated and election season reached a crescendo, the Insights Association welcomed the advancement of a helpful kids’ privacy bill in Congress, dug into yet more new state privacy laws, advocated on census funding and policy concerns, and feasted on other policy issues of interest to the insights industry.

Cool winds are blowing through DC and the state capitols, but the action in September remained hot on multiple policy fronts of interest to the insights industry. The Insights Association helped to snag wins against a tax on advertising research and a requirement for opt out preference signals, while also delving into pending legislation and new state and federal laws in data privacy, advancing legislation on artificial intelligence, new guidance for insights professionals using synthetic resear...

Summer may be winding down, but public policy disputes impacting the insights industry continued apace in August, including: new state privacy laws; new laws and guidance on artificial intelligence; and a key court decision on non-compete agreements in employment contracts. The Insights Association also managed a win on kids’ privacy legislation in the U.S. Senate and led the charge against a legislative proposal that would ruin the decennial Census and the American Community Survey (ACS).

The U.S. Senate just approved legislation, supported by the leading nonprofit association for the insights industry, that would regulate the design and operations of many for-profit online social platforms if they knowingly interact with minors 16 years of age or younger.

With summer almost upon us, the Insights Association focused this month on a new U.S. law prohibiting many data transfers to China and vaguely-Chinese-owned companies, federal minors’ privacy bills, more AI legislation, and how insights employers can comply with the new FTC rule banning non-compete agreements in employment contracts, among other policy issues.