‘You’re not being asked if you want ads’: the future of ad data use

At Web Summit, a panel of marketing experts gathered to discuss issues including consent for ad data use and regulating the tech sector.

Consumer data use in the advertising industry has become one of the most contentious topics in the tech world today.

Advertisers see it as crucial for more effective ads. Social media platforms see consumer data as a precious resource to be controlled and analysed. Internet users, meanwhile, are confused about how, where and why their data is collected and used.

The situation has spiralled, with whistleblowers such as Christopher Wylie calling out social media giants for unethical manipulation, and other industry critics vocal of the abuse of user’s data too.

“You cannot consent to something you don’t understand. And you can’t understand how and why third-party suppliers take your data and sell it to others,” said Brendan Eich, founder and CEO of secure web browser Brave.

You cannot consent to something you don’t understand. And you can’t understand how and why third-party suppliers take your data and sell it to others.

– Brendan Eich, founder and CEO of Brave

This is a point that Diana Lee, co-founder and CEO at Constellation, echoed strongly.

“We’re all being asked ‘do you want tracking?’,” she said. “But that’s not the question that needs to be asked. You’re not being asked if you want advertising – you’re getting that anyway. What you’re really being asked is ‘do you want tailored advertising or do you want general advertising?’.”

But would greater understanding of how tech platforms and advertisers plan to use your data really remedy the issue of tech giants harvesting people’s data for financial gain?

Regulating ad data use among the tech giants

Christopher Wylie, who was a whistleblower in the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal and is now research director at H&M Group, thinks a focus on consent alone isn’t enough.

“The conversation around transparency misses the point. In no other sector do you get companies putting the onus back on consumers to understand complex technological conditions. If you get on a plane, you don’t have to know how the engine works or know what’s in your medication at the doctors, because there is a competent regulatory body that looks out for that. We need something like that for how tech companies manage our data,” he said.

Web Summit’s panel of marketing experts discusses ad data use and regulating the tech sector. Image: Sam Barnes/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)

More regulation of the tech industry is hardly a new idea. There have been calls for greater regulation of the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon for years, with many critics claiming these companies are increasingly turning to data harvesting as their primary form of income.

The shape this regulation should take, however, was a point of contention for the panel of advertising and marketing industry executives at Web Summit 2021.

We can’t just think about data as an individual resource … Data is pooled and it becomes a resource used to generate algorithms that can be used for social harm.

– Christopher Wylie, research director for H&M Group

Treating data as a public resource

NYIAX founder Carolina Abenante thought that major tech companies, such as Google, should be considered as utility providers in the same way as water and electricity companies.

This, in theory, would require a regulatory framework treating data as a pooled resource to be deployed online appropriately, and to be safely treated in order to reduce the risk of this data causing any harm.

Christopher agreed with this assessment, saying, “we can’t just think about data as an individual resource or something that we want individualised. Data is pooled [by social media companies] and it becomes a resource used to generate algorithms that can be used for social harm”.

Diana had a different angle on the debate. She agreed that greater regulation of how data is used to manipulate what we see online is required. However, she also noted that the likes of Google refusing to share this data with other businesses is creating a disadvantaged system built around these major tech companies having a resource no one else can do without.

“What I would do to regulate the data that the biggest tech companies gather is say, ‘if you are gathering this data and you won’t sell it to anyone else, then you can’t use it yourself’. That would help even out the playing field,” she said.

More regulation of how data is used for advertising is clearly key, regardless of the form of that regulation. And, with digital cookies on their way out, is now the time to rethink the current system?

Main image: Sam Barnes/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)