The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age

by Joseph Turow

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.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 11, 2026

Reviews

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ellie Musil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of dry and a slow read, but very informative. It traces the history of advertisement from medieval times to TV to AI, and how our data is tracked. An interesting read!

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for any marketer or consumer. As someone who studied marketing back in college with a growing interest in data privacy, this book was incredible. Turow chronicles how personalization has grown from 1:1 business relationships many years ago all the way to the surveillance networks present in our world today. What is already here and what is ahead of us when it comes to personalization is frightening, and I appreciated both his observations and recommendations of how things should be different. I'd especially recommend the audiobook.

I wasn't familiar with Turow before this, but I will absolutely be seeking out his other works! Thank you to University of Chicago Press and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!