Examining Novel Advertising Solutions: A Proposed Risk-Utility Framework

This week, the Future of Privacy Forum released Advertising in the Age of Data Protection: Background for a Proposed Risk-Utility Framework for Novel Advertising Solutions (v 1.0), which will be open for Public Comment until May 26, 2024.

• Download the Proposed Risk-Utility Framework HERE
• FPF welcomes public comments until May 26, 2024

The digital advertising industry is in the midst of a sea change. Around the world, privacy regulators have become far more critical of mainstream advertising business models. Both lawmakers and enforcers of existing laws are now more focused on strengthening individual privacy rights and specifically preventing many of the harms associated with the use of personal information in advertising. Meanwhile, large platforms such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft have taken significant steps in recent years to limit access to advertising-related data about their users through efforts like App Tracking Transparency (ATT), Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), and an ongoing process to deprecate third party cookies in Google Chrome. Each change has ripple effects throughout the economy, changing the way advertisers do business and often impacting other social values.

In reaction to these regulatory and platform pressures, businesses are actively seeking new tools and solutions to maintain identity and addressability, or to provide greater privacy safeguards, ideally (in their view) doing so while sustaining as much business utility as possible. Many solutions involve privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), while others involve a significant shift in business models, such as a return to contextual advertising, the use of solely first-party data, or a shift to client-side processing.

The goal of this Risk-Utility Framework and its associated Background (“Advertising in the Age of Data Protection”) is to provide a comprehensive rubric for navigating the many tradeoffs inherent in the evolving digital advertising landscape and the technology it is built upon. We do not assign values to each aspect of utility, risk, or social impact, but rather aim to holistically identify the many factors relevant for a policymaker or privacy leader to evaluate the impact of a given digital advertising proposal, solution, or system.

Download the Risk-Utility Framework HERE.