Controversies

Targeted advertising has raised controversies, most particularly towards the privacy rights and policies. With behavioral targeting focusing in on specific user actions such as site history, browsing history, and buying behavior, this has raised user concern that all activity is being tracked.

Privacy International is a UK based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. This organization is fighting in order to make Governments legislate in a way that protects the rights of the general public. According to them, from any ethical standpoint such interception of web traffic must be conditional on the basis of explicit and informed consent. And action must be taken where organizations can be shown to have acted unlawfully.

A survey conducted in the United States by the Pew Internet & American Life Project between January 20 and February 19, 2012 revealed that most of Americans are not in favor of targeted advertising, seeing it as an invasion of privacy. Indeed, 68% of those surveyed said they are "not okay" with targeted advertising because they do not like having their online behavior tracked and analyzed.

Another issue with targeted advertising is the lack of 'new' advertisements of goods or services. Seeing as all ads are tailored to be based on user preferences, no different products will be introduced to the consumer. Hence, in this case the consumer will be at a loss as they are not exposed to anything new.

Advertisers concentrate their resources on the consumer, which can be very effective when done right. When advertising doesn't work, consumer can find this creepy and start wondering how the advertiser learnt the information about them. Consumers can have concerns over ads targeted at them, which are basically too personal for comfort, feeling a need for control over their own data.

In targeted advertising privacy is a complicated issue due to the type of protected user information and the number of parties involved. The three main parties involved in online advertising are the advertiser, the publisher, and the network. People tend to want to keep their previously browsed websites private, although users 'clickstreams' are being transferred to advertisers who work with ad networks. The user's preferences and interests are visible through their clickstream and their behavioral profile is generated.

Many find this form of advertising to be concerning and see these tactics as manipulative and a sense of discrimination. As a result of this, a number of methods have been introduced in order to avoid advertising. Internet users employing ad blockers are rapidly growing in numbers. The average global ad-blocking rate in early 2018 was estimated at 27 percent. Greece is at the top of the list with more than 40% of internet users admit to using ad-blocking software.