Could this really be the end of hyper-targeted advertising?
The European Parliament has approved a proposal to prohibit the use of certain types of highly segmented advertising based on factors such as sexual orientation, racial information, health status, or religious beliefs.
The most surprising thing about is not that that the proposal was approved with an overwhelming majority (530 yes, 78 no and 80 abstentions), but that this type of segmentation still exists; for years, some of us have been complaining about inappropriate or harmful advertising targeting particular groups.
Nevertheless, some online players are quite happy to offer their advertisers this kind of segmentation, based on the concept of implicit information: they do not process information garnered from their users, such as age or gender, but instead data they deduce from certain behavior: the content they consume, what they react to, or the contacts they define as friends.
This is clearly a breach of all the rules: the reason players like Google or Facebook have come to dominate online advertising is obvious: they’ve been able to segment using criteria traditional media can only dream of. Advertisers will always leap at the chance to target with that degree of specificity, with no ethical considerations. As a result, many advertisers have helped created a system that spies on us…
