The Government must relax the laws around data sharing for advertising purposes to allow the publishing industry to pursue greater personalisation, or risk the future of the UK’s £4.4bn sector.
That is the stark warning issued by trade body the PPA, which has set out its demands in response to the Information Commissioner’s Office consultation on its regulatory approach to online advertising.
The consultation is one of a number of “call for views” launched by the ICO on new regulatory approaches for 2025, including one on handling data protection complaints and consultations related to the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.
Back in March, the regulator said a review of the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) would “enable a shift towards privacy-preserving online advertising models”, but exact details were thin on the ground. It finally launched the consultation in July.
Now, the PPA, which represents over 200 magazine publishers in the UK, contributing £4.4bn to the economy and employing 55,000 people, is keen to ensure the regulator gets the message that publishers cannot sustain viable advertising models on contextual or consent-less inventory alone.
The organisation also claims that the privacy risks in this area are marginal, given the vast availability of personal data online – particularly that controlled by large platforms – and that genuine digital anonymity is now virtually non-existent.
The PPA advocates for extending consent exemptions under PECR regulation 6 to include third-party data sharing for personalised advertising, with safeguards like pseudonymisation and data retention limits.
It maintains that significant changes are required for measurement, attribution, and targeting to align with the ICO’s updated guidance on consent requirements, and calls for a more permissive regulatory environment to enable personalised advertising while safeguarding privacy.
Among the positive impacts of this change would be improved business confidence, customer experience, revenue, and innovation, the PPA insists.
The submission concludes: “For publishers to monetise through advertising in a commercially viable way, targeting must go beyond contextual and include personalised advertising. This is essential to secure commercially meaningful bids from advertising agencies, which consistently value personalised ads far more highly than contextual placements.
“Advertisers are particularly interested in specialist publisher audiences because they are typically engaged, informed, and loyal. These audiences also benefit; they gain access to fact-checked journalism (often in front of the paywall) funded by advertising. When delivered responsibly (with retention limits, pseudonymisation, and the use of processors rather than controllers), personalised advertising is both relevant and nonintrusive for consumers, while creating sustainable incentives for publishers to produce quality content.
“Without personalised advertising, publishers would be unable to generate sufficient revenue to support their journalism. We strongly urge the ICO to consider the value of a more permissive regime for personalised advertising for publishers and consumers.”
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