While the core business model of the web remains one driven by targeted advertising, the means and mechanisms available to perform this targeting are increasingly being limited by regulatory imperatives, reputational consequences, and platform policies. With the steady deprecation of third-party cookies and increasing restrictions on access to device identifiers on mobile devices, the advertising ecosystem is in the midst of a technological paradigm shift. This has led to the emergence of a variety of first and third party offerings which claim to allow for the various stages in the advertising life cycle (targeting, measurement, attribution, etc.) but with improved privacy properties. While many of these have been under development for a few years now, we now seem to be arriving at an inflection point where widespread deployment is expected in the coming years.
Digital advertising underpins many offerings on the open web and is not going away anytime soon. However, the methods via which such advertising is conducted today - ubiquitous tracking, consistent privacy scandales, and market opacity - is causing a lot more harm than good.
This panel discussion will seek to evoke discussions with the policy, technical and digital rights perspectives on the “how and why” of the solutions which will define the future of the behavioural advertising business model. There are clear opportunities to create a more sustainable future for the Internet’s business model but the core question remains - what needs to be different this time around?
