05 Aug 2018

How many vendors are relying on legitimate interest for ad targeting?

ICYMI: Why the GDPR ‘legitimate interest’ provision will not save you by Johnny Ryan.

The “legitimate interest” provision in the GDPR will not save behavioral advertising and data brokers from the challenge of obtaining consent for personally identifiable data.

The obvious question is: how many of the vendors listed on the Global Vendor and CMP List are actually relying on LI for purposes of Ad selection, delivery, reporting? Worth writing a simple script to check. Looks like 151 of 409, or about 37%.

Purpose 3 is:

Ad selection, delivery, reporting: The collection of information, and combination with previously collected information, to select and deliver advertisements for you, and to measure the delivery and effectiveness of such advertisements. This includes using previously collected information about your interests to select ads, processing data about what advertisements were shown, how often they were shown, when and where they were shown, and whether you took any action related to the advertisement, including for example clicking an ad or making a purchase. This does not include personalisation, which is the collection and processing of information about your use of this service to subsequently personalise advertising and/or content for you in other contexts, such as websites or apps, over time.

And here’s the list of vendors with a “3” in their legIntPurposeIds:

151 of 409 listed vendors claim LI for purpose: Ad selection, delivery, reporting

This is as of version 90 of the list, last updated 2 August.

Will be interesting to see if the number claiming a legitmate interest here goes up or down as people learn more about the applicable regulations.

#