Personalized ads relying on cookies that track user activity online only result in a 4% increase of profits for ad publishers compared to non targeted ads, a new academic paper finds. The researchers concede that “the increase is significant from a statistical perspective,” but point out that “from an economic perspective, the increase corresponds to an average increment of just $ 0.00008 [in revenue] per advertisement.”
Based on the paper’s findings, privacy advocates argue that companies are better off using non targeted cookies. The idea behind is that even though this would result in a slight loss of ad revenue, firms would no longer have to worry about maintaining compliance under strict data protection laws (like GDPR) and about getting fined for violations of these privacy regulations.
Read more: New research shows personalized ads are just barely more efficient than dumb ads
