• by Shirley Marschall , Featured Contributor, April 10, 2025

Ad tech has spent the last decade trying to simplify data and somehow made it more confusing than ever. Once upon a time, “data” was just data. Now it comes with disclaimers: first-party, third-party, zero-party (yes, that’s a thing), deterministic, probabilistic, hashed, fingerprinted… and the list keeps growing.

At this point, data could ask the same question German philosopher Richard David Precht once posed: “Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele?” (Who am I – and if so, how many?)

Between evolving identifiers, clashing regulations, and conflicting definitions, even data doesn’t seem to know what it is anymore.

Advertisers tuned out the moment cookies got another extension. Consumers never understood the difference between 1P and 3P cookies -- and why should they?

If cookies are supposedly dying, why are consent banners still everywhere?

If privacy is a priority, why does everything feel more invasive than ever?

We were promised a privacy-first future. What we got is a permission-first, confusion-everywhere mess.

The Transparency Paradox

We added layers of disclosure. Pop-ups. Permissions. Preferences.

But the more we try to explain data, the less anyone seems to understand it.

Ask a random user what happens when they click “accept all.” Odds are, they have no idea.

Ask the average user what a third-party cookie is, and you’ll get a shrug. Ask what a first-party cookie is, and you’ll get another shrug.

Tell them only one of those is dying,  and watch the panic in their eyes.

Even industry insiders struggle, not because they’re uninformed, but because the ground keeps shifting. Definitions change. Rules evolve. And the tech moves faster than anyone can track.

We’ve created a paradox: The more we clarify, the more confusing it gets.

Compliance vs. Clarity

GDPR. CCPA. CPRA. TCF. DSA.

The regulatory alphabet soup was meant to ensure transparency.

But in practice, it’s made data governance a never-ending round of legal whack-a-mole.

Brands now have entire teams dedicated to staying compliant -- but compliance doesn’t equal clarity.

“Privacy-first” gets slapped on nearly everything, regardless of how the data is collected, stored, or activated.

Meanwhile, users are still bombarded with vague consent pop-ups.

And even when they say no, it’s unclear what (if anything) that refusal actually stops.

Privacy has become a performance. A checkbox. A marketing term.

But clear, understandable data practices? Still MIA.

AI to the Rescue? Or Just Another Layer of Confusion?

Enter AI: the latest savior, solution, and smokescreen.

Vendors now promise that machine learning can predict behavior and personalize without tracking. But they rarely mention that AI still needs inputs: data, signals, context.

And those inputs still come from a fragmented ecosystem built on half-deprecated identifiers and legal grey zones.

AI doesn’t erase complexity. It abstracts it.

Now marketers are expected to understand probabilistic models, enrichment layers, etc., and decide which black box to trust.

Meanwhile, industry narratives keep pushing hyper-personalization to the extreme.

The Path Forward (Or Back to Basics?)

We’ve complicated data to the point where no one really knows what’s going on -- not marketers, not vendors, not regulators -- and definitely not consumers.

So maybe it’s time to simplify -- not by abandoning innovation, but by asking better questions:

• Do you really need 37 data points to sell shoes?

• Can we rebuild trust with transparency that means something?

• And what if the real privacy win isn’t another cookie explainer -- but not needing one at all?

Ad tech built a maze and called it progress. Time to find the exit.