Ads Without the Stalker Vibes: A Guide to Ethical Advertising in 2025
Do you feel like companies and advertisers are stalking you because of how targeted your ads are getting? We’ve all had a moment where the “for you” content hits a little *too* close to home.
Cookies aren’t just a delicious dessert anymore. In our digital era, cookies allow websites to remember your activity and analyze how you engaged with their site to further their marketing efforts. But at reCreative, we believe that there is a way to conduct successful advertising ethically, without following you around the web.
We focus on PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, which enables our clients to appear at the top of the first page of results for a specific search query. PPC works exactly how it sounds, you pay a certain amount of money each time a user clicks on your ad. This means that for a PPC ad to be successful, users have to initiate a search for a product or service the ad is promoting. PPC allows users to come to us instead of targeting them based on previous internet behaviors or stolen data.
While we believe PPC is the most ethical form of paid advertising, contextual targeting isn’t a bad choice either. Contextual ads are visible on sites that feature content that includes the keywords we’re targeting. For example, if you’re looking at a NYT article about healthy breakfast foods, an ad for Nature Valley Granola may appear on the side. Just like with PPC ads, contextual ads require users to search for or interact with content that contains the keywords, products, or services we’re advertising.
Remarketing campaigns can be tricky to define as ethical or unethical. While some remarketing ads are fairly straightforward, like abandoned cart notifications, others go a little deeper.
Social media remarketing targets users who have interacted with a brand’s posts, page, or ads – even if they’ve never visited your site. Browse history remarketing shows ads to users who have viewed product pages on your site but didn’t make a purchase. So if you look at a shirt on a store’s website, they can send you ads for that exact shirt or other shirts that have similar styles to encourage you to come back and make a purchase.
Some social media platforms also offer targeting based on things you “like” and any personal information you provide when setting up your account. They let companies use your data to determine if you fit the target audience for their brand. For example, you may see Facebook ads about getting your husband a gift if you have your relationship status set to “married,” or ads for graduate school programs if Facebook knows you’re a recent college graduate who just got your B.A.
Earlier this year, Apple was taken to court in a class-action lawsuit over privacy concerns regarding Siri listening in on conversations without user consent and sharing that data with third parties, including advertisers. These advertisers then used the data to send targeted ads to users based on information from the conversations Siri overheard. Talk about stalker vibes. Suddenly that doomsdayer on your favorite dystopian show who everyone thinks is crazy because he’s convinced the government is listening to us through the phone lines doesn’t sound so paranoid anymore.
With mounting privacy concerns in a world that is more digital than ever, we think it’s increasingly important to be as ethical as possible when advertising. We think it’s creepy when ads follow us around, so we’d rather not inflict that on others. We’ll stick to PPC and other non-invasive strategies, thank you very much.
