The Economist’s “Data protection-free zone” diagram of online ad auctions.

by Johnny RyanMar 28, 2019Brave Insights, GDPR, Policy

Latest updates: read more about the RTB complaints.

Mail list: receive updates & research notes in your inbox.

The main briefing in The Economist features the “data protection-free zone” at the heart of the online advertising auction system.

This chart is reproduced with permission from The Economist. Download large chart (6000 x 3344 px).

As The Economist writes, the IAB and Google’s “Real-time bidding” ad auction system “builds in incentives to get as much data to as many bidders as feasible. And that is not particularly conducive to the protection of privacy.”

The adtech companies, including supply-side platforms, advertising exchanges, and demand-side platforms, participate in what The Economist calls a “data protection-free zone” (see diagram).

A second piece in The Economist this same week estimates that:

“the amount of data involved is far greater than that lost to hacking or carelessness in one-off data breaches”.

See “Big tech faces competition and privacy concerns in Brussels“, and “Europe’s GDPR offers privacy groups new ways to challenge adtech” in The Economist.

The ICO’s failure to act on RTB, the largest data breach ever recorded in the UK

The ICO has today announced that it will be taking no substantive action to fix “RTB”, the largest data breach ever recorded in the UK. Regulatory ambivalence cannot continue. We are considering all options to put an end to the systemic breach, including direct challenges to the controllers and judicial oversight of the ICO.

Introducing Sponsored Images in Brave

Today we’d like to introduce “Sponsored Images”, the latest addition to Brave’s private advertising platform. These branded images will appear in the form of large, beautiful background images within our new tab page. Sponsored Images will bring additional revenue to support Brave’s mission, and give users a new reason to turn on Brave Rewards so they can get compensated for their attention. These images will begin to appear across our mobile and desktop browsers over the next few months. As always with Brave, Sponsored Images are private.