Privacy considerations for online advertising: a stakeholder’s perspective to programmatic advertising

Abstract

Purpose Privacy considerations have become a topic with increasing interest from academics, industry leaders and regulators. In response to consumers’ privacy concerns, Google announced in 2020 that Chrome would stop supporting third-party cookies in the near future. At the same time, advertising technology companies are developing alternative solutions for online targeting and consumer privacy controls. This paper aims to explore privacy considerations related to online tracking and targeting methods used for programmatic advertising (i.e. third-party cookies, Privacy Sandbox, Unified ID 2.0) for a variety of stakeholders: consumers, AdTech platforms, advertisers and publishers. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzes the topic of internet user privacy concerns, through a multi-pronged approach: industry conversations to collect information, a comprehensive review of trade publications and extensive empirical analysis. This study uses two methods to collect data on consumer preferences for privacy controls: a survey of a representative sample of US consumers and field data from conversations on web-forums created by tech professionals. Findings The results suggest that there are four main segments in the US internet user population. The first segment, consisting of 26% of internet users, is driven by a strong preference for relevant ads and includes consumers who accept the premises of both Privacy Sandbox and Unified ID (UID) 2.0. The second segment (26%) includes consumers who are ambivalent about both sets of premises. The third segment (34%) is driven by a need for relevant ads and a strong desire to prevent advertisers from aggressively collecting data, with consumers who accept the premises of Privacy Sandbox but reject the premises of UID 2.0. The fourth segment (15% of consumers) rejected both sets of premises about privacy control. Text analysis results suggest that the conversation around UID 2.0 is still nascent. Google Sandbox associations seem nominally positive, with sarcasm being an important factor in the sentiment analysis results. Originality/value The value of this paper lies in its multi-method examination of online privacy concerns in light of the recent regulatory legislation (i.e. General Data Protection Regulation and California Consumer Privacy Act) and changes for third-party cookies in browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Two alternatives proposed to replace third-party cookies (Privacy Sandbox and Unified ID 2.0) are in the proposal and prototype stage. The elimination of third-party cookies will affect stakeholders, including different types of players in the AdTech industry and internet users. This paper analyzes how two alternative proposals for privacy control align with the interests of several stakeholders.

Programmatic advertising in online retailing: consumer perceptions and future avenues

“…the need for automation to reap speed and efficiency benefits). Henceforth, we focus on the personalisation tension, as it reflects increasing consumer concerns about the use of personal data and privacy (Cooper et al, 2022;Rus-Arias et al, 2021). The data collection and use may vary from simple cookiebased data collection and behavioural tracking to top players using big data-driven AI (e.g.…”

“…the need for automation to reap speed and efficiency benefits). Henceforth, we focus on the personalisation tension, as it reflects increasing consumer concerns about the use of personal data and privacy (Cooper et al. , 2022; Rus-Arias et al.…”

“…Along similar lines, Palos-Sanchez et al (2019) argue that PA may be invasive, because beyond the use of cookies and geolocation, PA employs algorithms to determine user interests to target them with relevant ads later, even while visiting pages unrelated to the original site where those interests were identified. Recently, Google announced that their Chrome browser will no longer support third-party cookies, which further emphasises fundamental changes in how online advertising deals with tracking and targeting consumers using data (Cooper et al, 2022). Hille et al (2015) identify consumer privacy concerns as "consumers' apprehensions regarding how online companies collect and use their personal data" (p. 3).…”

The role of perceived usefulness and annoyance on programmatic advertising: the moderating effect of Internet user privacy and cookies

“…, 2018). If these data contain personal information, these data will be subject to the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC), which requires, among other requirements, that the owner of the personal data is informed that his or her data are collected and processed and gives his or her explicit permission to process them (Cooper et al. , 2022).…”

“…Whenever dealing with data and especially big data, the first step is to obtain this data, which can be obtained from third parties or directly from users (Li et al, 2018). If these data contain personal information, these data will be subject to the Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/ 46/EC), which requires, among other requirements, that the owner of the personal data is informed that his or her data are collected and processed and gives his or her explicit permission to process them (Cooper et al, 2022). On the other hand, if the data are obtained directly, the relevant national implementation of the Data Protection Directive will be necessary.…”