Dark Pattern or Personalisation: Where Is the Ethical Marketing Line?

Personalisation has become a normal part of digital marketing. Brands recommend products based on previous purchases, adapt messages to customer interests and change website content according to behaviour or preferences. Used carefully, this can make communication more relevant and save people time. The problem begins when personalisation stops helping a customer and starts steering them towards a decision they might not otherwise make. This is where ethical marketing meets the issue of dark patterns: interface choices, messages and behavioural techniques designed to reduce meaningful choice, hide important information or create unnecessary pressure. In 2026, the distinction matters not only from a reputational perspective but also because UK data protection and consumer protection rules place increasing emphasis on fairness, transparency and genuine consumer control. The practical question for marketers is therefore not whether personalisation should be used, but whether the customer remains informed, free to choose and able to understand why a particular message or option is being presented.

What separates personalisation from a dark pattern?

Personalisation is fundamentally about relevance. A retailer may recommend running shoes after a customer has viewed several pairs, an airline may show destinations based on previous searches, or a software company may tailor onboarding information to the service selected by a new user. These practices can improve the customer experience because they reduce irrelevant information without taking away the person’s ability to make an independent decision. Ethical personalisation should therefore make a service easier to use rather than make a particular commercial outcome harder to resist.

A dark pattern works differently. The design may use confusing wording, preselected options, hidden costs, artificial urgency or an unnecessarily difficult cancellation process to influence behaviour. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has described online choice architecture as the environment in which people make decisions online and has identified practices such as pressure selling, hidden charges and subscription traps as potential sources of consumer harm. Such techniques are particularly problematic when the user is not given a realistic opportunity to understand the alternatives before acting.

The key distinction is control. A personalised recommendation can still be ethical when the customer can reject it easily, understand the relevant terms and access other options without penalty. A design becomes much harder to justify when it deliberately makes one choice prominent while obscuring another, uses information asymmetry to the company’s advantage or relies on pressure rather than value. In practical terms, marketers should ask a simple question before launching a campaign: would the same customer still understand and accept the choice if the personalised elements were explained clearly?

Why intention and transparency matter

Good intentions do not automatically make a marketing technique ethical. A campaign may have been designed to improve conversion rates, reduce abandoned baskets or increase subscription numbers, but those business objectives do not remove the customer’s right to make an informed choice. Ethical marketing requires the commercial objective to coexist with a clear explanation of what is being offered and, where personal data is involved, why that data is being used.

This is especially relevant to profiling. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office explains that profiling for direct marketing can involve analysing interests, habits and behaviour to predict preferences or identify people who may be more likely to respond. Profiling can make marketing more relevant, but the ICO also stresses that organisations must consider fairness and transparency. People should not be surprised by unexpected or intrusive uses of their information.

Transparency does not mean filling a privacy notice with legal language that few customers will read. It means explaining important information at the point where it matters. If a recommendation is based on previous activity, the customer should not be left with a misleading impression about why it appeared. If a marketing message uses personal information, the organisation should have a valid legal basis and provide the information required by applicable data protection rules. The ICO’s current guidance also emphasises data protection by design when planning direct marketing.

How data, profiling and interface design can cross the line

Personalisation becomes more sensitive as the amount and type of information used increases. Remembering that someone prefers a particular product category is relatively straightforward. Combining browsing behaviour, purchase history, location, inferred interests and information obtained from other sources creates a much richer profile. The more detailed the profile becomes, the more important it is to consider whether the customer would reasonably expect this use of their information and whether the resulting marketing remains fair.

In the UK, direct marketing involving personal information is subject to data protection requirements, while electronic marketing is also governed by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations where applicable. The ICO states that organisations must be fair, lawful and transparent when using personal information for marketing. It also notes that people have an absolute right to object to direct marketing. These principles are particularly relevant when automated systems are used to segment audiences or determine which marketing messages different people receive.

Interface design is the other half of the problem. Even when the underlying data processing is lawful, the presentation of a choice can still create an unfair experience. A clear consent option beside an equally visible refusal option is very different from a screen where accepting is highlighted while refusal is hidden behind several additional steps. The CMA’s work on online choice architecture shows why these details matter: design can influence decisions, and certain combinations of design techniques can undermine consumer control.

Common warning signs for marketers

One warning sign is unnecessary friction around an option that benefits the customer but reduces revenue for the company. For example, changing a subscription may take one clear step while cancelling it requires several pages, repeated confirmations and deliberately distracting offers. Another warning sign is the use of urgency that does not accurately reflect reality. A countdown timer suggesting that an offer expires in minutes should correspond to a genuine deadline rather than reset whenever the visitor returns.

Preselected choices also deserve careful review. A default setting can be convenient when it reflects an obvious customer preference, but it becomes questionable when the default enrols someone into marketing, additional services or recurring payments without making the consequences clear. The same principle applies to wording. Buttons such as “Continue” and “Accept” may be perfectly reasonable, but ambiguous labels become problematic when the user cannot easily tell what will happen after clicking them.

Another warning sign is personalisation based on characteristics that customers would reasonably consider highly private or sensitive. The ICO specifically notes that profiling can become more intrusive depending on the type and amount of information involved, including information relating to areas such as health or financial circumstances. Marketers should therefore assess not only whether data can technically be used, but whether its use is fair, proportionate and consistent with what people would expect.

How to build ethical personalisation into marketing

The strongest approach is to treat personalisation as a service rather than a persuasion mechanism. Start with a clear customer benefit: more relevant products, simpler navigation, useful recommendations or information that reflects a stated preference. Then identify the minimum information needed to provide that benefit. This approach reduces unnecessary data collection and makes it easier for marketing teams to explain the purpose of their personalisation. It also supports a more transparent relationship because the customer can understand the connection between the information provided and the experience received.

Marketers should also test journeys from the customer’s perspective, not only from the perspective of conversion data. A/B testing can reveal which design produces more clicks, but click-through rate alone does not show whether users understood the offer or felt pressured. Teams should review cancellation journeys, consent screens, pricing information, promotional claims and recommendation systems as complete experiences. The question should be whether the customer can identify the important facts and make a genuine choice without unnecessary obstacles.

This approach is consistent with the wider people-first principles highlighted by Google Search Central. Google’s current guidance encourages content created primarily to help people, with clear attention to who created it, how it was produced and why it exists. It also emphasises a good overall page experience rather than focusing on isolated optimisation signals. Ethical marketing follows a similar principle: the customer should remain the central participant in the experience rather than simply becoming a target for behavioural optimisation.

A practical framework for responsible campaigns

Before launching a personalised campaign, marketers can review five basic questions. First, what customer benefit does the personalisation provide? Second, what information is being used and why is each element necessary? Third, would the customer reasonably expect this use of their information? Fourth, can the person reject the recommendation or marketing activity without unnecessary friction? Fifth, are all important costs, conditions, choices and consequences visible before the customer acts? If the answers are unclear, the campaign needs another review before it goes live.

It is also useful to separate relevance from pressure in performance reporting. A personalised recommendation should be judged not only by whether it generates an immediate sale but also by indicators such as repeat engagement, complaints, opt-outs, cancellation behaviour and customer satisfaction. This gives marketing teams a broader view of whether personalisation is creating genuine value. The ICO’s guidance similarly recommends planning direct marketing carefully, considering the information used, the purpose, the lawful basis, responsibility for compliance and the accuracy and retention of personal information.

Finally, ethical marketing needs regular review because digital practices and regulation continue to change. The ICO updated its direct marketing guidance in April 2026, including changes connected with the Data (Use and Access) Act, while the CMA’s 2026–2027 plan identifies misleading online choice architecture and hidden fees among areas receiving enforcement attention. This means ethical design should not be treated as a one-off compliance exercise. A campaign that was acceptable when first created may need adjustment as data practices, interfaces, customer expectations and regulatory requirements develop.