Adpocalypse : The new privacy legislations’ impact on digital advertisement in Sweden

Abstract: 2020 and 2021 were shocking years for advertising and digital marketing since both Apple and Google announced that they would limit third-party tracking. Google and Apple’s news created turmoil in the marketing business sector since advertisers no longer will be able to target and track the success of their digital ads as efficiently and effectively. In addition, there will be significant changes in the industry since these new privacy rules mean that there will be an inability of personalisation and just-in-time targeting for digital marketing, and advertisers have dubbed this situation the “adpocalypse.”  Both secondary and primary data were collected to answer the research question, how have the new privacy rules and regulations impacted the different steps of the AIDA model in digital media planning for digital advertising. Secondary data has been collected from business journals and academic journals, and the primary data has been collected through in-depth interviews. Further, the research is exploratory and explores the research question to give the reader a greater understanding of the subject area.   The following can be concluded from the research. Internet privacy rules and regulations will impact awareness, and it will be more challenging for companies to create awareness for their product offerings. Awareness will be heavily built on brand recognition, and the strategies for this step will revert to more traditional methods.  Interest would be affected since companies no longer will be able to follow up on their communication strategies as effectively. This research showed that the further down the company’s sales funnel, the more impacted the strategies. Further, desire would be more challenging for companies to create since retargeting, just-in-time targeting, and micro-targeting would no longer be possible in the same manner. Lastly, since action results from desire, this step would be heavily impacted.