Advertising today s relies heavily on personal user data. Stringent data protection regulations and the strict privacy agendas of the browsers are creating pressure on particular kind of ad-targeting techniques while others like contextual targeting are seeing more traction.
Apple and Google are instituting data privacy steps, which are sending ripples across the entire advertising ecosystem.
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Below are some of the ad-targeting techniques that appear to be on the wane, while others have already been reined in:
Fingerprint technology
While device fingerprinting had a recent windfall in the solution to Apple’s anti-tracking blockages. Google has declared open war on this method releasing a series of blogs calling for developers to ideate on ensuring sustainable ad technologies, which are compliant and data-privacy friendly.
Google has always made its stand firm regarding fingerprinting, but its latest communication on the technique described it as a non-transparent and “opaque” way of using data without user knowledge or permission.
This is a no-no under GDPR as well as other pending data protection rules. Apple is trying to curtail the technique with tighter privacy tracking on Safari; it will be incredibly difficult for this kind of technology to survive.
Cross-device tracking technology
Cross-device tracking or device graphs connect working devices. Instead of counting every device as the behavior of a different person, a device graph considers them as one, eliminating duplication.
Recently, cross-device vendors have fallen across Europe as a direct result of GDPR. No doubt there are some still struggling to survive, many of the smaller vendors have either quietly disappeared or been bought and absorbed into bigger businesses.
DoubleClick IDs
Attribution modeling is a massive hit owing to the pivot to privacy. The most significant blow was when Google pulled its DoubleClick IDs product that agencies focused on for cross-device attribution across the web.
Google explained its obligations to meet GDPR compliance as the reason for dropping the product as it continues to work on a beta version of Data Ads Hub. This is designed specially to fill in some of the gaps left by the removal of IDs but without comprising on the user-privacy red flags.
But agencies have stated that there is no like-for-like replacement to DoubleClick IDs and that they have to refine attribution strategies, scrapping out a lot of previous models used to track the effectiveness of the channels to inform media allocation.
Also read: How GDPR Affected AI-based Marketing
Location data-targeting technology
There has been an increasing concern regarding location data targeting technology’s compliance with GDPR. The IAB Tech Lab and the Internet Advertising Bureau have recently redefined their attempt towards standardizing GDPR compliance under the Transparency and Consent framework.
In this new version, location data targeting has been added with a specific “feature,” meaning that publishers and advertisers must ensure location vendors are disclosed. Further, the user must comprehend the reason their location is tracked and agreed to it for ad targeting. Their consent must be well-informed and explicit.
Following the arrival of GDPR, location-targeting suppliers are already starting to wane in numbers as the way many location companies build profiles is to pick data from the bid requests. That is now clamped down on harder by the U.K. data protection authority and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The real-time bidding
Utilizing personal data within bid requests is tough without explicit consent. The likelihood of people agreeing to share sensitive personal data such as their sexual orientation or political beliefs intentionally used for targeted ads is rare.
If advertisers want to use this kind of information for targeting programmatic ads on the open exchange, they will need to get explicit and informed consent from the users to do so. Therefore, the type of data within RTB will change.
The ICO has been clear that this kind of data is being exploited within bid requests, along with other critical information like device IDs, cookie IDs, and location data. Therefore, using personally identifiable data like that via RTB is likely to die out, presuming that the ICO can effectively police it.
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