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The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age
A respected voice on technology shows how seemingly simple ads help dismantle democracy and public discourse.
Whether you’re intentionally shopping or casually browsing social media, something is following ads. Their creators seem to know your income bracket, politics, age, location, medical conditions, and tastes in clothing, food, and romantic partners. As advertising firms use predictive AI to discover your hot buttons and generative AI to push them, your online world becomes an increasingly bespoke—and isolated—place. The fervid competition around personalization in digital marketing has given rise to an ecosystem of advertisers, media outlets, tech companies, and retailers who monetize your data while threatening the health of our media, discourse, and sense of community. In this urgent book, award-winning author Joseph Turow shows how we got here, and how to change direction.
The Problem with Personalization shatters common beliefs about advertising history by showing that individualized ads are not new. Today’s AI-enabled advertisers draw on past aspirations and assumptions about personalization while weaponizing data in unprecedented ways that drive social fragmentation and the disappearance of shared social reality. Informed by interviews with marketing insiders and covering the latest technology advances, Turow accessibly explains how artificial intelligence sifts through our data to tag and target us wherever we go with personalized videos, pictorial billboards, audio messages, and more. A logical next step for advertiser support is tailored entertainment and news, a shift that further destroys the common ground necessary for a functioning democracy.
A must-read for all who care about the future of public discourse, The Problem with Personalization reveals how targeted advertising has altered how we’re seen and what we see in return.
Whether you’re intentionally shopping or casually browsing social media, something is following ads. Their creators seem to know your income bracket, politics, age, location, medical conditions, and tastes in clothing, food, and romantic partners. As advertising firms use predictive AI to discover your hot buttons and generative AI to push them, your online world becomes an increasingly bespoke—and isolated—place. The fervid competition around personalization in digital marketing has given rise to an ecosystem of advertisers, media outlets, tech companies, and retailers who monetize your data while threatening the health of our media, discourse, and sense of community. In this urgent book, award-winning author Joseph Turow shows how we got here, and how to change direction.
The Problem with Personalization shatters common beliefs about advertising history by showing that individualized ads are not new. Today’s AI-enabled advertisers draw on past aspirations and assumptions about personalization while weaponizing data in unprecedented ways that drive social fragmentation and the disappearance of shared social reality. Informed by interviews with marketing insiders and covering the latest technology advances, Turow accessibly explains how artificial intelligence sifts through our data to tag and target us wherever we go with personalized videos, pictorial billboards, audio messages, and more. A logical next step for advertiser support is tailored entertainment and news, a shift that further destroys the common ground necessary for a functioning democracy.
A must-read for all who care about the future of public discourse, The Problem with Personalization reveals how targeted advertising has altered how we’re seen and what we see in return.
- GenresNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
Published June 11, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 9, 2026
I keep reading this sort of book and they all are quite consistent when explaining how data collection and targeted advertising works. Nevertheless, what is always fun, and I mean that sarcastically, is finding out about very specific companies having done something I didn't know about. There was a class action complaint filed against BOSE because the app you need on your phone in order to pair the headphones was recording what people were playing and selling that data to third parties. I was listening to this audiobook on guess which kind of headphones.
It's becoming quite clear to me that an individual can do as much as they can to avoid having their data collected and have ads targeted at them, but it would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to do, not to speak of the money invested in devices that would allow them to still live in society without becoming a technological hermit. None of those things are reasonable or practicable expectations to put on the individual.
It's becoming quite clear to me that an individual can do as much as they can to avoid having their data collected and have ads targeted at them, but it would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to do, not to speak of the money invested in devices that would allow them to still live in society without becoming a technological hermit. None of those things are reasonable or practicable expectations to put on the individual.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review