By Aly Nurmohamed, CEO & Founder, Nodals AI
Privacy isn’t something happening to advertising; it’s happening to consumers, impacting them in ways they may not even realise, sometimes as simply as the browser they’re using.
The key to performance isn’t just knowing who your customers are—it’s understanding the impact of privacy on their behaviour, where and how they are browsing, how to reach them in those environments, and leveraging AI to make the process faster and more efficient. Advertisers who adapt now will lead the way in digital marketing and drive impactful outcomes for their brands.
Not all privacy choices are intentional
Privacy preferences vary widely, and not everyone is making an active choice. Broadly, consumers fall into three groups. Privacy-conscious consumers who actively protect their data and opt out of tracking wherever possible. Passive privacy consumers who may not prioritise privacy still benefit from environments with built-in protections, like Safari or logged-out media platforms that limit cross-site tracking. Trackable consumers not concerned with privacy operate in environments that allow extensive tracking, like Chrome with third-party cookies or logged-in platforms where email addresses serve as identifiers.
Privacy-conscious consumers are protected by law and expect transparency in how advertisers communicate with them. Trackable consumers can be targeted with advertising, but it’s important to note that at least 70% of these consumers are unaddressable. Advertisers who continue to focus budgets on the 30% of trackable consumers are severely limiting their reach.
Yet, discussions around privacy in advertising often focus on policies, platform updates, and workarounds—Google’s five-year journey to remove cookies, GDPR, consent frameworks, and alternative IDs—rather than exploring what’s possible and what will actually drive performance.
Don’t miss out on consumers
Evolving privacy regulations and platform restrictions have changed the landscape, but it’s not an all-or-nothing shift. More tracking and personal data doesn’t automatically mean better performance. You need to treat each privacy group differently. If I’m a high-income parent planning a holiday, I’m a valuable audience—but if I’m a passive privacy consumer type using Safari and relying on cookies, you won’t serve me an ad. Not because I’m hiding, but because you’re choosing not to look beyond traditional tracking.
To increase audience engagement and drive performance, brands must focus their strategies on the growing group of passive privacy consumers. This group is emerging as a distinct channel, rich with valuable audiences but requiring a new playbook to reach effectively. Traditional tracking-based advertising won’t reach them—advertising innovation has to follow. That means shifting toward AI-led solutions using predictive models and media owner data to stay relevant and effective.
Unlock the benefits of media owner data
Following consumers around the internet can give you obvious—but often shallow—insights. Someone visits a retailer and looks at shoes, so you serve them a retargeting ad for shoes. It’s simple, but surface-level. Media owner data, on the other hand, offers something deeper. It’s not just about what someone did—it’s about why they did it. These signals can reveal intent, mindset, and emotional context.
As the number of passive privacy consumers grows, media owners are uniquely positioned to offer powerful, nuanced insights. These go far beyond surface-level demographics or contextual cues—they reflect a much deeper understanding of audience behaviours and preferences.
Take a leading news publisher, for example. Imagine they can see that a reader doesn’t just skim the headlines, but regularly returns to articles on sustainable investing, spending ten minutes on pieces about emerging green technologies, then engaging with in-depth analysis on their economic impact. They can track how long someone lingers on certain topics, when they’re most likely to engage, and which types of content bring them back.
These aren’t cookie-driven interactions; this is rich, behavioural data that reveals genuine user intent—something third-party signals could never truly capture.
This is the kind of intelligence media owners hold: insights built through direct relationships between content creators and actively engaged audiences. It’s not just about knowing who the consumer is, but understanding what motivates them, and then reaching them with relevant, personalised messaging at precisely the right moment.
By harnessing these insights alongside their existing data strategies, advertisers can not only optimise performance but also build deeper, more meaningful connections with the audiences that matter most.
Make media owner data actionable
Not all first-party data is immediately actionable. For advertisers to truly unlock its value, they need to interpret and transform media owner signals into meaningful, usable insights. That used to be a complex, manual task—but today, AI and innovation are streamlining the process, allowing vast volumes of first-party data to be analysed in real time.
Think of the difference between a search engine and ChatGPT. Search is brilliant when you need a straightforward, transactional answer—“Where can I buy running shoes?” But when you’re looking for nuance, context, and connection—“What’s the best way to build a sustainable fitness routine?”—ChatGPT shines.
Marketers are often searching for that same nuance. And this is where media owner data becomes incredibly powerful. By using AI to uncover patterns in content consumption, engagement behaviour, and preferences, advertisers can move beyond guesswork and focus on the signals that actually drive outcomes.
Meet your audience where they actually are
Privacy is no longer about finding workarounds for what’s been lost, but about unlocking the value in what’s already available. The passive privacy consumer represents the new mainstream: high-value, high-intent audiences who are increasingly unreachable through traditional means. They’re not avoiding advertising—they’re simply living in environments that require smarter strategies to engage.
Advertisers who continue to focus solely on the shrinking pool of trackable consumers are playing a losing game. Meanwhile, those who embrace the opportunity to innovate—by partnering with media owners, applying AI to uncover deeper insights, and building privacy-forward approaches—will drive stronger, more sustainable performance.
Now’s the time to evolve your strategy—and meet your audience where they actually are.
