Adtech, or advertising technology, is the set of systems that collect, route, and auction advertising signals across apps, websites, data brokers, and ad platforms. It commonly uses device identifiers, SDKs, cookies, location hints, and audience labels to decide which ad to show and how much to charge for it. Because the data often passes through many vendors, the original source and final recipient can be hard to track.
In cyber security, adtech matters because it can create a large, fragile data supply chain. A poorly configured tag, SDK, or partner feed can leak sensitive attributes, expose users to profiling, or widen the blast radius of a compromise. Defenders reduce this risk with data minimization, strict vendor reviews, consent controls, segmentation, and logging of every onward transfer. Attackers may abuse adtech by injecting malicious ads, scraping identifiers, or piggybacking on trusted third-party scripts to collect data at scale.