The ICO has set out its 2025 priorities for the online advertising industry.

'Control' seems to be the central theme for the ICO in 2025; the ICO expects organisations deploying advertising technologies to provide meaningful control to users – to help them choose what to share, with whom, and the purposes for which it can be used – with the ultimate aim of safeguarding and empowering people. 

To achieve this, the ICO plans to tackle deceptive practices (such as the setting of cookies without consent) as well as alternative forms of tracking, such as fingerprinting [for more information see our article here], without providing users with genuine choice. 

The ICO also plans to ensure that organisations provide individuals with "simple information" to help them make informed choices, and to ensure that organisations are not undermining user choice by processing personal data in accordance with commitments made to users. 

Finally, the ICO makes clear that choice includes ensuring that users have a meaningful way to change their mind after initially agreeing to share their data.  

As part of their strategy to provide users with more control, the ICO also intends to work with publishers to deploy more privacy-preserving advertising that does not involve extensive profiling, and to explore where PECR 'storage and access' (cookie) consent requirements may be hindering a shift towards these models. It remains to be seen how this will evolve, especially given the ICO has recently issued draft guidance on storage and access technologies [for more information see our article here] which makes clear its view that consent is required for all forms of advertising technologies – including for contextual advertising solutions and ad measurement purposes.

However the ICO's work in this space plays out in 2025, it's clear there will be plenty of issues to grapple with as the ICO seeks to strike a balance between user privacy and allowing ad-funded businesses to thrive.