• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

A class action lawsuit filed against PubMatic last month could threaten the entire advertising-publishing ecosystem if many other people get the same idea.

A group of consumers sued PubMatic in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asking for class status, compensatory, punitive and. statutory damages and court costs.

 Their chief complaint? That PubMatic gathered and used their  personal data without consent. It is not clear how this can easily be determined on an individual basis. 

PubMatic had not answered the complaint at deadline, 

but the company told Ad Exchanger in a separate context  that it “never ignores the consent of the user,” adheres to any consent signals it receives and only “passes unaltered signals to its partners in every transaction in which we engage.”

As it is, the judge and jury will have to wade through extensive definitions of data brokers, supply side platforms, demand side platforms,  real-time bidding cookie-syncing, and other aspects of programmatic advertising, to figure it out. 

The complaint makes the broad claim that data brokers “typically collect not only what they immediately need or can use, but hoover up as much information as possible to compile comprehensive data sets that might have some future use.”

Where does PubMatic fit in?

“According to PubMatic, it is ‘one of the world’s leading scaled digital advertising platforms’ and “offer[s] more transparent advertising solutions to publishers, media buyers and data owners, allowing [their clients] to harness the power and potential of the open internet to drive better business outcomes,’” the complaint states.

The plaintiffs also allege that PubMatic is using “Pixels in conjunction with website operators and other third parties to (i) de-anonymize users, (ii) offer users up for sale in real-time bidding, and (iii) allow website operators to monetize websites by installing Defendant’s Pixels and allowing the Defendant to collect as much information about users as possible (without consent).”

The complaint continues that the plaintiffs and class members had “a reasonable expectation that their communications, identities, personal activities, health and other data would remain confidential.” And, charges that these individuals “did not and could not authorize Defendant to intercept data on every aspect of their lives and activities.”

Let’s get one thing straight: Data on consumers is not being gathered for some nefarious purpose: The goal is to facilitate commercial marketing. Numerous studies have shown that consumers , while nervous about their privacy, demand the benefits of advanced personalization.