Targeted advertising (sometimes called personalized advertising, behavioral advertising, or online advertising) is the practice of showing ads online that are specifically chosen for you based on your interests, behaviors, and background. Instead of seeing the same ad as everyone else, you will see ones that closely reflect what you’ve been searching for and consuming online.
In theory, personalization makes advertising more relevant and useful, but it’s achieved by collecting and analyzing masses of your personal information, which happens behind the scenes and probably without your knowledge. This is where targeted advertising can be a risk to privacy, security, and personal autonomy.
In fact, the non-profit privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says, “Tech companies make billions by harvesting your personal data and using it to sell hyper-targeted ads. This business model drives them to track us far beyond their own platforms, gathering data about our online and offline activity. Surveillance-based advertising isn’t just creepy—it’s harmful. The systems that power hyper-targeted ads can also funnel your personal information to data brokers, advertisers, scammers, and law enforcement agencies.”
Targeted advertising relies on collecting enormous amounts of information about your online life. This data comes from your web browsing, search histories, social media activity, online purchases, app use, and even location tracking, and is often called your digital footprint or digital exhaust.
Cookies are the most common mechanism for website user tracking. Cookies are text files with small pieces of data such as a username and password that identify your computer on a site and allow you to use it. Cookies also allow advertisers to track your internet activity and serve you targeted ads.
There are two types of cookies – first-party and third-party – and both collect personal data:
First-party cookies are set by the website you’re visiting. They store information such as your login status, language preference, and products in your shopping cart. First-party cookies are usually used for critical reasons and to improve your experience while on the site, and only the website uses the information. They are less invasive than third-party cookies and are always allowed by law.
Third-party cookies are set by others outside the website you’re on, usually advertisers and analytics companies. Third-party cookies track your activity across websites to build a profile of your interests and behaviour. For decades, these cookies were the foundation of targeted advertising, but growing privacy concerns and tighter regulations have lead to third-party cookies being phased out. Browsers like Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies, and while Google Chrome promised to phase them out, it is now offering a user control model for enabling or disabling them, and alternative ad-technologies. But a “cookieless” future doesn’t mean advertisers and others can’t track you online. A bunch of other technologies are filling the gap.
Algorithmic targeting is another driver of personalized advertising. Algorithmic targeting uses computer algorithms to decide which ads, posts, or recommendations to show you, based on patterns found in your data. These systems constantly analyze your clicks, searches, location, and time spent on content to predict what will keep you engaged.
This happens continuously and invisibly, shaping your digital environment in real time. Over time, algorithmic targeting can create a kind of “curated reality” – one where what we see online is heavily influenced by commercial or political interests rather than our own choices.
Real-time bidding (RTB) is the actual buying and selling of ad space through online auction platforms. When an ad space opens up on a website or app, the rapid-fire process of RTB takes place within milliseconds. Watch this quick video to understand the process:
You won’t detect a thing, but in the split second it takes you to open and load a webpage or app, many companies could have accessed your data to bid for the available ad space on the service you’re using. This is a massive privacy risk.
There’s no doubt personalized ads make marketing more efficient and user-friendly. Advertisers get better value for their ad dollar by showing relevant ads, while we get to see products and services better aligned with our interests and save time and money searching for products and services.
Personalized advertising also helps fund the internet. Many of the “free” services people use daily – from search engines and news sites to social media platforms – rely on ad revenue from data-driven targeting.
Despite its benefits, targeted advertising comes with some hefty privacy risks and ethical dilemmas:
Loss of control: Most users don’t know how much data is being collected about them or who it’s shared with. Privacy policies are often long, complex, and hard to interpret.
Data breaches: Storing huge volumes of personal data increases the risk of leaks and identity theft.
Manipulation: Algorithms can exploit psychological biases, influencing what we buy, believe, or even vote for.
Bias and discrimination: Automated systems can unintentionally reinforce social inequalities; for instance, by showing certain job ads only to specific demographic groups.
Surveillance expansion: Personalized advertising technologies now extend beyond browsers to phones, smart homes, vehicles, and even public spaces.
The real-time bidding process is especially problematic because hundreds of companies can access user data during each auction, even if they don’t win the bid. While this data is often anonymized, it’s not hard to re-identify individuals, and the information is sometimes resold to other companies or governments with little oversight. RTB is now under increasing regulatory scrutiny.
Some privacy laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are demanding more transparency and user consent and control in targeted advertising. These laws give individuals rights to access, correct, or delete their data, and to opt out of targeted advertising, but compliance and enforcement are challenging.
The spotlight on data privacy means marketers are turning to new privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to balance effective digital ads with consumer privacy requirements. Some examples of PETs are:
Anonymization and encryption, which protect identifiable information
Differential privacy, which allows data to be analyzed without revealing individual details
Decentralized identity systems, letting users verify who they are without handing over personal data to multiple platforms.
Each of these tools gives consumers more control.
The MySudo Suite is a powerful platforms of apps to protect everything you do online. Within the suite:
MySudo offers unique email addresses and phone numbers built into Sudo digital profiles. By maintaining different emails and using your “primary email” less, you break the data trail that adtech and data brokers depend on.
The MySudo in-built private browsers are full-featured web browsers (one per Sudo) that allow you to explore the web as your Sudo profile and protect your own personal information. Your search history and data are securely contained in the Sudo you are browsing from, with no risk of contaminating your browsing experience in another Sudo. The MySudo private browsers also have in-built ad and tracker blockers that you can adjust per Sudo.
MySudo VPN is a truly private VPN. A VPN stops data collection, especially when you’re not logged in to any personal accounts. It routes your internet activity through a secure, encrypted tunnel, masks your IP address so that you can be anonymous and not locatable online, and also blocks targeted ads and web trackers. A VPN with a no-logs policy like MySudo VPN also means the VPN provider doesn’t store any of your personal information and is a privacy-first option.
Watch this short video from Anonyome Labs’ CTO, Dr Paul Ashley, on the 3 reasons you need a VPN and why MySudo VPN is a great choice for security and privacy:
Targeted Advertising
