A recent report by the Irish NGO ICCL (Irish Council for Civil Liberties) reports the extent of data sharing performed in real time in programmatic advertising. A gigantic market estimated at 117 billion euros in 2021 in the United States and Europe.
An American’s data is shared 747 times a day
Numbers that make you dizzy. In the report of the NGO, it is in particular a question of the ” RTB (for real time bidding), a technique used to track your online habits. Brands buy data, especially with Google, to establish accurate profiles and push the right ads to the right people. Through a confidential source, the ICCL was able to have access to delusional figures. Every minute, without knowing it, we deliver valuable information to companies who use it to try to sell us their products and services.
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In the report, for example, it is explained that the online behavior of a Frenchman is shared 340 times per day on average, more than four times per minute. It’s huge, but it’s less than the European average: 376 times. Still below average in the United States: 747 times. This difference is probably due to the implementation of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which limits this practice to some extent. This last requires publishers to obtain your consent before siphoning off your data.
The slowness of the Irish CNIL annoys the NGO
According to the ICCL, 197 billion shares related to programmatic advertising are made in Europe every day and 294 billion in the United States. As surprising as it may seem, it is nevertheless a low range. In fact, the NGO did not have access to Facebook or Amazon data. Two great RTB specialists. Google alone makes 42 billion shares every day to more than a thousand third-party companies. Among these companies, there are those which push advertisements to us and there are those which have their headquarters in China or Russia, which siphon off our data with less obvious objectives.
Some of our data may, for example, end up in the hands federal agencies or intelligence services. By publishing this report, the ICCL calls on world governments to take firm decisions in order to put an end to what it calls “the biggest data leak”. Several complaints are pending, in particular against the DPC (the Irish CNIL). According to the NGO, the institution should seriously attack Google, whose European headquarters are in Dublin, but it does not do so.