In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission finalized updated guidelines for social media platforms, warning against what it called "commercial surveillance" — the practice of extensively collecting, analyzing, and monetizing consumer personal data for advertising targeting. The Surgeon General issued an advisory on social media and youth mental health. Congress held hearings on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act.
The regulatory moment has arrived. And the marketing analytics community has a choice about how to respond to it.
What We Know About Consumer Trust and Data
Research Area 5 in my portfolio examines the relationship between consumer data privacy practices and trust in U.S. digital commerce. The core question is deceptively simple: when consumers know how their data is being used for advertising personalization, does that knowledge increase or decrease their trust in the platforms and brands involved?
The evidence suggests the answer is both — and the direction depends heavily on the quality, transparency, and perceived fairness of the data practices being disclosed.
"Transparency alone does not build trust. Transparency combined with meaningful consumer control builds trust. Most current 'privacy disclosures' satisfy the first criterion and fall comprehensively short of the second."
The ADPPA Moment
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act, if enacted, would impose the most comprehensive federal consumer data rights framework in U.S. history — including data minimization requirements, opt-out rights for targeted advertising, and algorithmic impact assessment obligations for large platforms.
Marketing analytics professionals have mostly responded to ADPPA with concern about the operational constraints it would impose. I want to suggest a different perspective: ADPPA represents an opportunity for the marketing analytics community to establish ethical standards that distinguish responsible data-driven marketing from predatory data exploitation.
What Ethical Marketing Analytics Looks Like
My research proposes four core principles for ethical marketing analytics in the consumer data era:
- Proportionality: Collect only data that is necessary for the stated marketing purpose, and retain it only as long as that purpose requires.
- Legibility: Make data practices understandable to the consumer whose data is being used — not just to the legal team reviewing the privacy policy.
- Controllability: Give consumers meaningful, low-friction controls over how their data is used for advertising targeting.
- Equitability: Conduct regular audits of advertising targeting systems for demographic disparities in ad content quality and health implications.
Research Connection
Consumer data privacy research connects directly to multiple papers in the health analytics program — particularly Paper 9 (Health Literacy, Targeted Advertising, and Vulnerable Consumer Protection) and Paper 8 (NLP Health Misinformation Classifier). The intersection of data analytics methods and consumer protection ethics is a through-line of my entire research program.
The Researcher's Responsibility
Marketing analytics researchers have helped build the technical infrastructure of commercial surveillance. That is a statement of historical fact, not a moral condemnation. But it does create an obligation: the researchers who understand these systems most deeply have a particular responsibility to contribute to the frameworks that govern their ethical use.
I have chosen to take that responsibility seriously. It shapes every research question I ask and every policy recommendation I make.