Privacy-Centric Digital Advertising: Implications for Research

Abstract

Yesterday’s digital advertising relied on cross-website and cross-app user identity to measure, target, and optimize ads. Spurred by regulatory pressure, today’s digital advertising is evolving to become more privacy-protective. Apple and Google are leading this movement by sunsetting old technologies and building more privacy-centric alternatives. Marketing academics and practitioners, in turn, must learn to adapt to this new reality. We outline these new advertising approaches and their implications for advertising strategy, targeting, and measurement. We propose key questions and an agenda for researchers to help shape the privacy-centric future of digital advertising.