{"id":3799,"date":"2022-10-10T01:14:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T05:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/advertisingweek.com\/aw360\/2022\/10\/10\/first-party-data-can-solve-ad-targetings-bias-problem-heres-why-it-hasnt\/"},"modified":"2022-10-10T01:14:37","modified_gmt":"2022-10-10T05:14:37","slug":"first-party-data-can-solve-ad-targetings-bias-problem-heres-why-it-hasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/advertisingweek.com\/aw360\/news\/first-party-data-can-solve-ad-targetings-bias-problem-heres-why-it-hasnt\/3799\/","title":{"rendered":"First-Party Data Can Solve Ad Targeting\u2019s Bias Problem. Here\u2019s Why It Hasn\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Reggie Wideman, Chief of Staff, Head of Strategy, Lytics<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

For advertisers everywhere, traditional ways of targeting are failing to honor new ways of thinking (or the way many modern consumers today live). With more data at our disposal than we know what to do with, brands no longer need to make assumptions about who someone is and what their demographics mean about them<\/a> in order to reach them. Nonetheless, they continue to do so and many even fail to recognize their assumption-based approaches \u2014 despite<\/em> audience frustration and growing usage of ad blocking technology<\/a> from disgruntled web users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Reliance on assumptions about who our ideal customers are and what they want have inadvertently injected bias into our acquisition strategies. It used to be that the majority of families fit the traditional, nuclear mold (think: mom, dad and at least two children). Nowadays, only 46% of families do<\/a>. Today, it\u2019s more common to see single-sex couples, divorced parents, childless single adults, etc. Where it was once expected that women of a certain age would be stay-at-home or working moms, today, one in five women are actively choosing not to have children<\/a> \u2014 and for educated women who hold at least a bachelor\u2019s degree, that ratio jumps to 1 in 4. Ad targeting, however, has not yet caught up with the times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, to claim that unintentionally biased advertising is solely a cause of societal change would be misguided. Without exploring our unconscious biases and how they play out in our advertising strategies, the story of why<\/em> this is happening remains incomplete. (To dive even deeper, join our discussion<\/a> on October 17th with Reggie Wideman, Head of Strategy at Lytics, Giusy Buonfantino, Vice President, Consumer Packaged Goods Industry Solutions at Google Cloud and Steven Moy, CEO of Barbarian, \u00a0at 4:10 p.m. ET and learn to check your ad targeting biases at the door.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

How unconscious bias affects ad targeting<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Biases come in all shapes and sizes. And unfortunately, advertisers often make assumptions about their audiences based on demographic data, leaving room for things like unintentional gender, age, racial biases, etc. Here are some of the ways gender bias alone, as an example, plays out in the world of advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n