21 October 2021: Tracking-based online advertising imperils fundamental rights and publisher sustainability by diverting data and revenue from publishers. It favours Big Tech and the bottom of the web at legitimate publishers' expense, and enables massive fraud and micro-targeted disinformation. 

Key insights 

• A Norwegian news publishing group earned an average of 391% more for contextual ads than tracking based ads over 12 months.
• Advertising revenue increased by 149% when Dutch publisher NPO Group replaced tracking-based ads with contextual-based ads.
• Tracking-based ads targeted using “Real-Time Bidding” (RTB) cause the biggest data breach ever recorded, jeopardising the right to privacy, right to protection of personal data, and right to freedom of thought.
• Audience data leakage prevents publishers from selling their own audience exclusively. And it exposes citizens to profiling and disinformation. The “IAB Audience Taxonomy” standardises how people are micro-targeted (example: IAB code 600 denotes “Christian”).
• Half of Google’s ad revenue once came from helping publishers show ads on publishers own properties. But now nearly all (85%) of Google’s ad revenue comes from displaying ads on its own websites and apps, with the benefit of data siphoned from publishers’ websites & apps.
• Fraud made possible by tracking-based ads diverted an estimated €30.1B to €58.8B from legitimate publishers 2020.

See the full report for more.