March 17, 2018, the Guardian published an in which Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, revealed that Facebook had given Cambridge Analytica a grant to collect data from millions of Facebook users without their consent. Using the gathered and analyzed data, Cambridge Analytica targeted the Facebook users with manipulative advertisements that were been instrumental in the 2016 Trump's election victory. This revelation and its aftermath sparked a major Internet privacy awakening. With the growing rise of internet privacy awareness, advertisements on the Internet underwent major changes.
In fact, in recent years, massive misuse of internet personal data by online advertising and digital marketing companies has raised public awareness of privacy and has increased concerns on how personal data on the Internet is exploited. Consequently, the industry of Internet advertising and digital marketing has been dramatically reshaped to adapt to the new situation.
This short blog post is questioning how AdShares is contributing to this dynamics.
The Rise of User Privacy Awareness
From the beginning of the Internet, the use of user data has been widespread, and with the advent of web2, this has become broader and more sophisticated too. However, the question is why the issue of privacy became an acute public issue only after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The first reason for the intensity of Cambridge Analytica scandal impact would be the breadth of the breached data and the second reason would be Facebook's involvement as a dominant social network. But the most crucial reason would be the direct and tangible effect that this activity had on the lives of a large number of people for at least four years, namely the election of Ronald Trump.
Many people have realized that the effect of misusing user data is not limited to maximizing the profit of advertising companies or businesses that use the internet as a platform to advertise their products. Rather, it can directly affect the political and social destinies of many.
Basically, demographic data such as gender, age, and place of residence, as well as behavioral data of users saved and extracted so that advertising companies be able to use them to classify and profile users. By categorization of users, the advertising companies can provide their clients with target marketing.
User Privacy Awareness Reshaped Online Advertising
In the specific case of Cambridge Analytica, in addition to the common background data, they were able to identify and measure extremely more accurate data on interests, beliefs, and attitudes as well as psychological characteristics of users through an application that was integrated into Facebook. Thus, during the election campaign, the marketing team was able to send different advertisements to different groups of people with different characteristics, and this violated the most basic and obvious principle of democratic competition, namely transparency in promises.
As a consequence of this deep and widespread use of user data and manipulation of public opinion, many strived to prevent happening similar misuse of data in the future. Except for Facebook, which promised not to repeat the incident and imposed restrictions on data usage, other big corporations executed some measures. For instance, Google Chrome announced that it would stop third-party cooking in the near future. It also had consequents on higher levels of government and regional decisions and law as well. For instance, in the European Union, the GDPR was taken more seriously.
These restrictions and regulations dramatically affected the online advertising and marketing industry. Companies were forced to take extensive measures to adapt to the new conditions. For instance, some measures are suggested in an article in
Here are a few steps you can take to adapt your business based on current privacy trends:
1. Expand your monetization model. If your main income comes from advertising, then you should think about subscription and/or in-app models.
2. In the short term, it is not worth allocating a large amount of advertising budget for promotion on platforms where CPM is falling.
3. Test more ad formats. Not everything needs re-marketing. Some ad formats involve only brand advertising.
4. Start working toward direct sales of your ads. You can then control the process of selling them yourself. In addition, this will reduce costs like commissions from third-party advertising platforms.
5. Think about how else you can increase the impact of your business, perhaps beyond the B2C. You may have formed a lot of tools that can manifest themselves in the B2B segment.
The Advent of Web-3 and User Privacy Issue
While some aspects of these measures are reformist, others are more about circumventing restrictions on the misuse of user data.
The advent of Web-3 and the potential role of blockchain projects in various fields on the Internet raised hopes and enthusiasm among those who are concerned about users' privacy. Particularly, in the field of marketing, the question is raised what can blockchain projects contribute to this issue. Will they provide tools or platforms for marketing companies to adapt to new situations or will they provide solutions to improve user privacy? This question also applies to Adshares.
Adshares and the Question of User Privacy
Reviewing the Adshares' whitepaper, we see that the former aspect seems to have been a priority for the founders. All of the benefits of using the Adshares network are all related to advertisers and ad-hoc platforms.
The founders should answer this important question: what are the benefits of public users in terms of privacy with the success of the AdShares project and the greater use of Adshares? How can a decentralized mechanism contribute to preventing the misuse of user data? If Adshares has a clear answer to these questions and puts it in the front in their public relations, they can certainly have the support of ordinary users of the project in addition to the support of businesses.
Some crypto exchanges with nice welcome bonuses and high-rate interest:
- Cake DeFi: Stake, Add liquidity and earn; Sign-up, top up $50 and earn 15$ bonus + $5 learn and earn in DFI. (Referral link
- : High rate interest in bitcoin; Sign-up, top up $100 or more, earn $25 in BTC. (Referral link
