The Advertising Value of Intrusive Tracking

Here's an interesting research paper that tries to calculate the differential value of privacy-invasive advertising practices.

The researchers used data from a mobile ad network and was able to see how different personalized advertising practices affected customer purchasing behavior. The details are interesting, but basically, most personal information had little value. Overall, the ability to target advertising produces a 29% greater return on an advertising budget, mostly by knowing the right time to show someone a particular ad.

The paper was presented at WEIS 2015.