“The way ads are targeted today is radically different from the way it was done 10 or 15 years ago,” said Frederike Kaltheuner, who heads the corporate exploitation program at Privacy International. “It’s become exponentially more invasive, and most people are completely unaware of what kinds of data feeds into the targeting.”

This is an extract (link below) from some research work by 'Privacy International', as a marketing guy (poacher turned gamekeeper) I found it quite useful given the furore last year around GDPR, and Facebooks recent declarations on its pivot to changes on 'privacy', data collection and usage.

I'll let you go through the research, but one things for certain, the majority of online consumers haven't a clue what information is being tracked, stored and used for 'programmatic' digital advertising.

Most reasons people use the ad skip, or ad block function is because they intrude in the primary purpose they are there, not because of data collection and privacy issues - YET!. 

There's also the perceived view that folks are OK with social media platforms using there data because it's free. Well as sure as night follows day, the data privacy argument roadshow will continue onwards.

'Rocking Horse shit is hard to find', they say, the same can be said for consumer data that's being held by numerous companies, in countries some of us have never even heard of, let alone been to.

Here is one gem of a snippet from the research;

“In the next election, I think it is inevitable that every single voter will have been profiled based on what they have been reading, watching and listening to for years online,” said Johnny Ryan, the chief policy officer at Brave, a private web browser that allows users to block ads and trackers.

Companies can target by location, too. It’s possible to single out bankers on Wall Street or political aides on Capitol Hill. If you wanted to target any specific location, you could find an ad platform that could do it (but the accuracy would vary depending on the technology used).

So, the big question here is, now that companies are starting to be heavily legislated against, how long do you think it will be before even more people install 'ad blockers' to avoid your brand/corporate message because its now not just intrusive, but also because its illegal?

Yet another key reason to start thinking about how to utilise 'organic' content for the 'purpose' of building relationships on Social Media.