Stephan Noller

Career

Stephan Noller studied psychology at the University of Cologne, earning honors for his thesis "Mental Models and Web Navigation" - with distinction. In professional publications and research studies Noller concentrated on theories which conclusions could be drawn from users' online behavior. After his work at TNS Emnid, where he was tasked with developing a new process for measuring internet coverage for the industry association AGOF (awarded in 2006 with German market research prize), he also developed a targeting system for TNS Infratest for online advertising based on automated profiling during 2005/2006, being active for United Internet Media, publisher for portals such as gmx.de and web.de (named TGP).

Noller is responsible for further development of this targeting system (Predictive Behavioral Targeting by nugg.ad) and continuous adjustments of the technology upon market requirements. In February 2015 a patent was awarded with Richard Hutton and Noller as the inventors. It was awarded - as first targeting-technique on the market - the data privacy seal of The Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD) in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, under the direction of Thilo Weichert, as well as the EuroPriSe seal (funded by the European Commission under its eTEN programme). One of the major reasons for the award was the initiation of a preceding anonymization process which filters IP addresses reliably, hence being compliant with data protection's central criterion of data austerity. In 2009, Noller was elected chairman of the IAB Europe Policy Committee. In this function he represents the interests of the European internet industry in Brussels to political committees at the European level and has an influence on current market developments. Center of his function is data privacy and its challenges due to data-driven internet business models. In 2013 Stephan Noller was appointed as a member of the Advisory Board "Junge Digitale Wirtschaft" to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy and as a member of Rheinland Palatine's state council for digital development and culture.

In appreciation of his activities and work, Noller was awarded the "Best Personality" award (Marketing and Interactive Excellence Awards Europe 2012) reflecting his continued position at the heart of European innovation in interactive advertising. Prizes were awarded at the Interact Congress gala dinner on the 30th of May 2012.

We need a right to pseudonymity on the internet. We have to come to terms with the fact that the internet lives with data and that the being collected is increasing exponentially. But we should not accept that this data can always be associated with a particular person if the business model or legal position does not make it absolutely essential. There is hardly a more effective mechanism than the right to pseudonymity when it comes to preventing data scandals and nipping espionage infrastructures in the bud. It should be compulsory that companies only collect personal data if it is absolutely necessary and they can prove that there are no possible ways to anonymise the data.

On 14 April 2011, in the context of this activity, a self-regulation model was presented to the public by a broad coalition consisting of associations, companies and technology-provider of the European online industry, addressing the loophole regarding the realization of the ePrivacy directive towards the European commission and potentially leading to more transparency and control in dealing with online behavioral advertising.

Besides the industrial aspects, Stephan Noller takes part in the so-called post-privacy-debate and concerns himself with the question to what extent the classical data privacy model could be applied on today's usage-scenarios on the internet.

Since 2012 he is columnist at the leading data driven advertising blog ExchangeWire. His roots come from Fraunhofer Society where he worked on machine learning algorithms to predict user's interests and demographics out of behavioral data.