Measuring the Impact of the GDPR on Data Sharing in Ad Networks

Abstract

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in May 2018, brought new rules for the processing of personal data that affect many business models, including online advertising. The regulation's definition of personal data applies to every company that collects data from European Internet users. This includes tracking services that, until then, argued that they were collecting anonymous information and data protection requirements would not apply to their businesses. Previous studies have analyzed the impact of the GDPR on the prevalence of online tracking, with mixed results. In this paper, we go beyond the analysis of the number of third parties and focus on the underlying information sharing networks between online advertising companies in terms of client-side cookie syncing. Using graph analysis, our measurement shows that the number of ID syncing connections decreased by around 40 % around the time the GDPR went into effect, but a long-term analysis shows a slight rebound since then. While we can show a decrease in information sharing between third parties, which is likely related to the legislation, the data also shows that the amount of tracking, as well as the general structure of cooperation, was not affected. Consolidation in the ecosystem led to a more centralized infrastructure that might actually have negative effects on user privacy, as fewer companies perform tracking on more sites.

From WHOIS to WHOWAS: A Large-Scale Measurement Study of Domain Registration Privacy under the GDPR

“…Different types of cookie notices were found to be displayed to visitors according to their country [39]. Recent works measured the impact of the GDPR on the online tracking ecosystem [55], [96] and advertising business [103], [102]. Some of our findings echo with the discoveries on the web, e.g., timely response to the GDPR.…”

Exploring the opinions of the YouTube visitors towards advertisements and its influence on purchase intention among viewers

“…Thus, the customization of advertisement is promoted, thereby enhancing the impact of ads (Tyrväinen et al, 2020). Different measures are used in customizing ads that enable users to determine the content, through customer preference surveys and cookies by visiting websites (Urban et al, 2020;Xue, 2020). Irritation occurs due to disruption of purpose that also results in a concern of losing privacy (Aziza & Astuti, 2018).…”

European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data

“…We add to a growing empirical literature on technical and commercial implications of the GDPR, and relate to theoretical work on its implications for competition policy. This literature spans across disciplines, including industry reports (WhotracksMe, 2018), and academic work in computer science and communication (Dabrowski et al, 2019;Solomos et al, 2019;Hu and Sastry, 2019;Degeling et al, 2018;Libert et al, 2018;Sørensen and Kosta, 2019;Urban et al, 2020), marketing (Johnson and Shriver, 2020;Goldberg et al, 2019;Goddard, 2017), information systems and economics (Godinho de Matos and Adjerid, 2020;Zhuo et al, 2019;Sharma et al, 2019;Lefrere et al, 2019;Jia et al, 2019b,a;Aridor et al, 2020), and law (Gal and Aviv, forthcoming;Geradin et al, 2020).…”