💔The Problem
You interact with digital services and purchase products from “brands[1]” globally. With each interaction you share personal data which is used for a certain purpose (e.g., offering a product and servicing to you). You (must) agree to share your data – in most cases – without knowing how a brand will use it (often hidden in a privacy policy or mentioned in unclear language). But what can you do if a brand uses your data against your will, and how do you keep track of all these legal terms that governs a brands’ use of your personal data?
Today, you have no control over how brands use of your personal data. It is entirely the Brand that decides (i) when to contact you (+frequency), (ii) via which channel, and (iii) the content you receive. That is largely because people lack the tools to give brands clear instructions about the frequency of interaction, the channel of preference, and the content of choice. There is a need to level the playing field, to bring people on the same level of technical maturity as brands, to make this exchange of information consumer-consenting, and two-directional.
A large part of the time you spend online (social media and websites), you are being subjected to online advertising. The Ad-Tech market touches billions of consumers [we call them “people”!] and it is reliant on collecting and sharing a large amount of people’s personal data. Therefore, today’s privacy problem is even more apparent in the online advertisement space (Ad-Tech industry), where your personal data – along with the data of billions of other internet users – gets shared with and used by numerous companies (unknown to you) for their benefit.
Even though the different stakeholders in the AdTech industry are aware of this privacy abuse, they continue to use it for their benefit. There are several reasons that explain this behavior :
- (a) It’s a Billion dollar industry
Why would some brands and publishers sell and misuse your data? Online advertising is a lucrative business model, valued at USD 334 billion in 2019, USD 378 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 982.82 billion by 2025.[1] This model is entirely based on collecting personal data about you and increasing your screen-time. Every second and click (literally) counts.
[1] Online advertising market - growth, trends, covid-19 impact, and forecasts (2021 - 2026), see report Mordor Intelligence, https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/online-advertising-market#:~:text=Market%20Overview,the%20forecast%20period%202020%20%2D%202025; Digital Marketing spending worldwide 2019 – 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/237974/online-advertising-spending-worldwide/.
- It allows for personalization (although not privacy compliant)
The online advertising ecosystem offers a clear advantage over traditional advertising channels like TV, press or radio stations: personalization. Your online activity can be tracked and afterwards processed to obtain a profile of you, which reveals your preferences and interests. Conceptually, this is a good idea, because knowing your interests allows platforms and brands to show you ads and content that interests you. However, the obsession for personalization has led to the development of a sophisticated tracking ecosystem mainly motivated by the advertising business. This ecosystem goes further than the online activity of people and with the proliferation of smartphones allows to also track the physical mobility and places visited by an individual.
Many e-commerce businesses use Online Advertising because they do not have any other option. Today if a brand wants to have an online presence, there is no other alternative than using the advertising services that Facebook, Instagram and Google provide, even though your brands is then participating to and even financing this large-scale personal data abuse.
- However, opposition is there and change is coming
Despite all the tracking, AdTech stakeholders still largely fail to show people ads of real interest. The result is that many people consider online ads annoying and useless, which along with the perception of privacy intrusion have led people to massively install ad blocker solutions. In addition, different scandals have motivated a reaction by people as well as public administrations.
Last updated