Privacy, Data, and Effectiveness: The State of Digital Advertising in 2025

At the Privacy-Centric AdTech Summit, all these topics were covered by a diverse group of eight experts in front of 180 professionals from advertisers, marketing agencies, tech providers and legal firms. DDMA and VIA joined forces and succeeded in serving the audience with rich content from every relevant angle and important parties in this space. The total package made it a high end and rounded summit evaluated highly by the attendees. In this article I provide a recap of all the insights presented, including my personal view on them.

1. Current legislation not sustainable

‘Future proof’ organizations either don’t use personal data or use personal data with the right consent. Consent must be given freely, informed, for specific purposes, explicitly and with as little personal data as possible. A key challenge lies in the concept of being ‘informed’.To be compliant we need to overload customers with information, such as privacy statements and cookie forms,resulting in the present situation where customers cannot and will not consume the information. This is a privacy paradox that is not sustainable.

2. Upcoming legislation

Next to GDPR and the Digital Services Act (DSA), there is new legislation upcoming: the Digital Fairness Act (DFA). This may introduce  additional restrictions on dark patterns, extending transparency obligations from the DSA on all actors. Also, we might expect a ban on advertising to vulnerable customers. This raises important questions: What is the definition of a vulnerable customer and how do we exclude them from advertising?

3. Google Privacy Sandbox developments

Google is in close contact with many stakeholders in the advertising and measurement industry and has established a large and growing community for gathering input and testing. Under the Privacy Sandbox initiative, there are more than 20 new privacy enhancing technologies being developed. One of the things that caught my eye concerns a remarketing technology. Google’s Protected Audience API re-engages relevant audiences by anonymizing insights as shown below.

Also, I am pleasantly surprised by a Protected API case study where ad delivery performed similarly to current retargeting systems, even generating a higher CTR in some use cases. Who would have thought that a year ago!

4. Data-driven persona’s at Ogury

Ogury offers a solution which targets personas instead of people, using customer questionnaires as the foundation. It also integrates data from contextual bid requests, open source and the Privacy Sandbox. This is also called a zero-party data solution. It uses data customers provide and translates it to usable information for advertisers to target a diverse range ofvarieties inpersonas.

Data-driven personas are an interesting addition to the traditional methods, one that feels future-proof to me.

5. Panel data at Dentsu

Dentsu uses panel questionnaire data to target and activate audiences directly in platforms. With over 10.000 customer attributes – all cookieless, it uplifts campaign ROI through propensity models. The addressable inventory can be connected with walled gardens, data partners such as LiveRamp and Zeotap, open internet such as Quantcast and ID-less environments such as Airgrid.

Nice was the use case proving the relevant lift of segmented creatives on conversions.

6. DPG Media Supports Advertisers in a Changing Digital Landscape

The digital advertising market is under pressure due to stricter privacy regulations, the phase-out of third-party cookies, and an increasingly fragmented media landscape. DPG Media is addressing these challenges by leveraging the power of first-party data, technology, and its extensive media reach.

With a broad portfolio of news media, magazines, radio, and television, DPG Media collects valuable first-party data. By encouraging users to log in, the company builds a strong data foundation that is used in a privacy-compliant way to serve advertisers. This enables targeted advertising in a world without cookies.

A key differentiator is the ‘Trusted Web’—an advertising ecosystem where brand safety and reliability are paramount. Research shows that news media are trusted three times more than social media. Advanced machine learning models ensure that ads are not only brand-safe but also contextually relevant.

DPG Media also invests in technologies such as AdManager (a self-service platform), DataLab (for privacy-friendly data matching), and Design (for ad optimization). Cross-media targeting and partnerships with retailers such as Carrefour further enhance campaign effectiveness.

Finally, DPG Media is pioneering new measurement methods, including Brand Lift Studies, Attention Measurement, and Retailer Sales Lift, to assess the real impact of campaigns. While others wait to see what major tech players like Google will do, DPG Media has already established a future-proof strategy.

7. Marketing ROI measurement

Just Eat Takeaway (JET) is very experienced in holistic marketing effectiveness measurement. However, privacy enhancing developments are impacting measurement because of data signal loss.

Key takeaways from their case: Instead of a single source of truth, they are building a system of sources to unearth different aspects of the truth – what they call a Marketing Effectiveness Framework. Incrementality experimentation is the gold standard for effectiveness measurement. Meanwhile, privacy-centric click-based attribution is still good enough to make good decisions on an operational level. More accessible and better MMM solutions can help with portfolio-level decision making.

8. Data wallet

Other privacy-enhancing solutions are applications such as ‘Jouw-ID’ (a.k.a. ‘Datakluis), which offers customers full control of their personal data, ranging from demographics and interests to the companies they want to share (part of) their data with as shown below.

‘Jouw-ID’s wallet includes declared data, behavioral data, identity data and potentially could include verified official records such as driver’s licenses and medical documents.

Although I like the concept of control, I am not sure if customers are willing to keep and activily manage their records and interests. Maybe it could work if customers could manage it in a seamless one- or two-click experience. Another concern is security – if it gets compromised, identity abuse risks arer high.

To conclude

In summary, the event offered the audience a diverse range of solutions and visions from many tech angles in advertising measurement, making it a high-end and well-rounded AdTech Summit. I am looking forward to the next edition in one or two years to see where we are then.

Jan Hendrik Fleury

Director Dataconsulting bij Artefact en Voorzitter Commissie DDE