The basic assumptions of online advertising have always been so simple.

1) The foundation of all online ads are Cookies.

2) For the sites we love, we cannot escape Cookies.

3) Advertisers gather meta-information from these Cookies and push out interest based ads.

The question is, are these assumptions changing? Consumers are voicing out their concerns regarding privacy policies, people are only browsing in Incognito mode and technology-geeks are coming up with Cookie-confusers to mess data up. To me, it almost seems like activism against the ways of Digital Marketing. To be fair, there is still so much room for evolution and change.

The Network Advertising Initiative, a leading non-profit self-regulatory association dedicated to responsible data collection and use for digital advertising, recently published Guidance for NAI Members: Use of Non-Cookie Technologies for Interest Based Advertising Consistent with the NAI Code of Conduct.  The Guidance provides clarity on how their members can comply with the NAI Code of Conduct when they use non-cookie technologies for interest-based advertising and reflects NAI’s commitment to supporting a free and thriving internet while protecting consumer privacy in the modern digital ecosystem.

Compliance to new privacy standards is essential. So the question is how do we change our current ways to adapt to the new ones? Will there still be interest based targeting through cookies or will we all eventually become Cookie Monsters?