AI Data Drought? News Sites Leading Pack Of Platforms Preventing Data Harvest
“You are what you eat” is no longer just a warning to heed as we kick into high football-watching gear.
It’s been a fundamental concern for anyone who’s given AI technology more than a minute’s thought, and a recent study by Data Provenance Initiative of the training data AI models use shows a pattern to which, well, junk-food bingers might relate.
… As Kevin Roose says in The New York Times, the study not only showed that data is “drying up,” but it “discovered an ‘emerging crisis in consent,’ as publishers and online platforms have taken steps to prevent their data from being harvested.”
Publishers Remain Focused On Alternatives Despite Google Cookies U-Turn
Commercial staff at leading publishers have told Press Gazette they’re still set on transitioning to first-party data despite Google’s landmark decision in July not to proceed with its long-promised deprecation of third-party cookies. Although the tech giant’s about-face caused grumbles in the news industry, executives at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference agreed the threatened death of cookies on Google‘s dominant Chrome browser provided the impetus necessary to get their houses in order on user data. That change, they added, appears to already be reflected in increased ad sales.
How Privacy Laws Are Impacting Targeting
While first-party data ranks as the [No. 1] tactic being used by ad decision-makers to target consumers in response to restrictive data privacy laws, contextual data is a close No. 2, according to findings of an ad industry survey released this morning by Proximic by Comscore. The findings, part of a just-released “State of Privacy in Advertising Report,” are based on surveys of 200 advertiser, agency and publishing execs conducted July 11-21, including the one above, which asked respondents how they were adapting their ad targeting strategies in response to restrictive data privacy laws.
Given the clear reported benefits of personalization more broadly, it should be no surprise that nearly 9 in 10 (88%) of all respondents plan to use AI to help with their personalization efforts. However, there is one factor that has a significant influence on perceptions of AI’s potential — specifically, whether AI is already being used or not.
