3 Out of 4 People Want Companies to Use Consumer-Consented Data, According to Survey

The days of advertisers and big tech companies profiting from your data without your direct content may be coming to a close. A recent Realtime Research survey commissioned by Invisibly shows that 3 out of 4 people want companies to only use consumer-consented data for advertising and targeting purposes – that is, data that customers supply themselves and that they have full control over – not data collected from apps or behind the scenes.

Invisibly wondered how much people know about online ads in general, and how companies track and target people for advertising purposes.

Here’s what Invisibly learned:

• 84% of respondents said that they know what browsing cookies are.
• 75% of respondents said they “like” the idea of companies needing their consent to track them.
• 70% of respondents don’t agree with companies tracking them for marketing purposes.
• 44% of respondents said that they use an ad blocker to prevent companies from targeting them. Only 6% of people said they don’t use an ad blocker because they like ads targeting them.
• Men were more knowledgeable of how online ads work than were women or non-binary respondents.

Invisibly asked people if they knew how internet browsing cookies work, to which 84% responded yes. The number of people who don’t know increased with the age of respondents, and men were 23% more aware than women.

Invisibly asked people how they feel about companies needing consent to track you online, and 75% of respondents would prefer that companies have direct consent, whereas 25% don’t care either way. This stayed a consistent trend across age and gender.

When asked directly whether people agree with companies tracking them for marketing purposes, 70% of respondents did not agree, whereas only 17% did, and 13% did not care either way. Men were more agreeable to online targeting than were women, with 27% of men agreeing compared to only 7% of women.

Survey results showed that despite the fact that only 6% of people said they like targeted online ads, only 44% reported using ad blockers to prevent them.

You can read the full report with all the data here. If you’d like to learn more, I’m happy to connect you with regular media contributor Dr. Don Vaughn Ph.D. Head of Product at Invisibly for a phone, zoom/skype or email interview. Invisibly has now been featured in hundreds of media interviews including Forbes, VentureBeat, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, The Motley Fool, Tech Radar, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNBC, FOX and more.