Open Access

Julia Hartmann

• Today, personalized online advertising is part of user's everyday life. Based on data collected online, targeted advertisements are displayed. This approach often triggers concerns among users about the protection of their data, which has made data protection a globally important issue in recent years. This is also the case in Germany and the U.S. These two countries have two fundamentally different approaches to protecting their users' data, which is due to different perspectives on privacy and the culturally different handling of user data. Based on cultural behaviors, there are many differences between users from the U.S. and Germany, but that they also have some similarities that affect user behavior and attitudes toward personalized online advertising. The concept of personalized customer communication is promising and can be beneficial for both users and advertisers. The cultural aspects help to assess a user's personal boundaries in order to decide on the degree of personalization of an advertisement so that no concerns are raised.