A number of MEPs have started a petition to pressure the European Commission to take action against personalized advertisements. Last year, parliament already asked the Commission to consider a total ban on this. But according to the Commission, this is going too far, which would rather see other measures that protect privacy. A ban would then not be necessary.
Sometimes it does indeed lead to irritation: looking for a garden chair once and you are then flattened with advertisements for garden furniture. Or if you click once on a video of a political party, multiple advertisements from that same party will appear.
Companies such as Facebook and Google closely follow our movements online. They collect this data to allow those advertisers to place targeted personalized advertisements.
This can be useful, because it often causes people to see advertisements for things they need. Advertisers are also more likely to buy a product through this advertisement. But according to MEPs, privacy is at risk.
Greatest and most powerful
Paul Tang, MEP for the PvdA and co-initiator of the petition, wants large tech companies to be dealt with quickly. These companies are fully committed to personalized advertisements, as a result of which other websites have seen their advertising revenues decrease.
“These kinds of tech companies are the largest and most powerful companies in the world. For every 100 euros spent on advertising, they take away about 50 to 70, leaving news outlets badly behind.”
‘Nothing wrong with it’
But Marthe Verpoucke, as an online marketer, works daily with personalized advertisements and thinks there is nothing wrong with it. She shows how that works.
“Suppose you want to sell cat food, you can enter the word ‘cat’ here in a search bar. You will then get options that you can select as interests. For example, do you want to ‘target’ people who love cats (‘catlovers’) , then you can just literally select it here. ” People who have recently liked a cat picture will see such an ad on Facebook. Chances are they also have a cat themselves.
It puts the responsibility on the user. “You always decide for yourself whether you accept an advertisement.”
Moreover, according to her, a ban has little effect. “The number of ads will not decrease, but it will just become less specific. Soon you might see an ad for cat food, even though you don’t have a cat at all. So why do you care?”
Not necessarily more profitable
The STER has stopped using personalized advertisements since the beginning of 2020. According to the foundation behind the advertising at the Dutch public broadcaster, this decision has not led to a decrease in income. “Last year we generated a lot more turnover and strangely enough advertisers did not pay more,” says Frank Volmer, director of STER.
According to him, this is because personalized advertisements entail high costs. It is therefore much cheaper for the STER not to use personalized advertisements. Today the STAR looks at the place of the ad. “For example, we place travel advertisements around travel programs. We don’t need any personal information at all,” says Volmer.
Still, the question is whether there will actually be a ban on personalized advertisements. Both the European Commission and the Member States must agree to this. The question is whether they want that, and if that is the case, it will take a long time before such a ban is finalized.