• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 27, 2025

A recently introduced privacy bill in California would “unreasonably impede” some forms of location-based advertising, major ad industry groups said this week in a letter to state lawmakers.

The bill (AB 1355), unveiled last month, would prohibit businesses from collecting or using residents' location data unless the information is needed to provide goods or services requested by the residents, and they have expressly consented. The measure also would prohibit companies from selling location data, and deriving inferences from the data, unless doing so is necessary to provide requested goods or services.

The major ad industry groups argue that the measure “would unreasonably impede California consumers from receiving relevant, location-supported messaging if such messaging is not 'necessary' to provide a good or service they already requested.”

“Location information is an integral component of advertising personalization and marketing that allows companies to reach consumers with relevant content and ads, enabling consumers to learn about goods and services that are near to them,” the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies, Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation and Digital Advertising Alliance write in a letter asking lawmakers not to advance the bill.

“Without the ability to collect and use location data for advertising purposes, businesses will have a more difficult time, and face higher costs, reaching individuals with relevant marketing, and consumers will not be alerted to products and services they desire that are near to them,” the organizations add.

But advocacy group Consumer Reports, which co-sponsors the bill, says in a letter to lawmakers that it will “provide straightforward, powerful, and critically important protections for the privacy, autonomy, and physical safety of Californians.”

The organization argues that the collection and sale of location data can harm consumers in several ways, including by enabling predatory practices.

“Data brokers sell information about people who rarely even know the companies even exist -- and who have rarely ever affirmatively, expressly consented to this information collection and sale,” Consumer Reports argues.

“In some instances, this can result in financially disastrous consequences for consumers,” the organization adds, referring to reports that some data brokers segment consumers into categories like “Rural and Barely Making It” and “Credit Crunched: City Families.”

Those lists “can be used to target individuals most likely to be susceptible to scams or other predatory products,” the group writes.

The proposed law defines location information ambiguously, describing it as data that reveals people's present or past locations “with sufficient precision to identify street-level location information within a range of five miles or less.”

The current version of the bill also says location data can include not only GPS coordinates and cell-site data, but also IP addresses, information captured by license plate readers and photos in some facial-recognition systems.

The ad groups write that the bill's definition of location data “could capture almost all data collection in the ecosystem, beyond the types of data captured in other state laws,” including California's privacy law. That law gives people the right to opt out of the collection of their “precise” location data, described as information that could identify someone within a radius of 1,850 feet.

The California Assembly's Privacy and Consumer Protection committee is expected to hold a hearing on the bill on April 1.