Stephan Noller studied psychology at the University of Cologne, earning honors with distinction for his thesis "Mental Models and Web Navigation". In professional publications and research studies Noller concentrated on theories as to what conclusions could be drawn from users' online behavior. His roots come fromFraunhofer Society, where he worked on machine learning algorithms to predict user's interests and demographics out of behavioral data. After developing a new process for measuring internet coverage for the industry association AGOF while working at TNS Emnid, he created an online advertisingtargeting system based on automated profiling for TNS Infratest in 2006: Predictive Behavioral Targeting by nugg.ad. Besides continually developing this system, he was also active for United Internet Media, and published portals such as web.de and gmx.de. The Predictive Behavioral Targeting system became the first targeting system to be granted the data privacy seal of The Independent Centre for Privacy Protection in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and was also granted the EuroPriSe seal in 2009 for using a preceding anonymization process that filtered IP addresses reliably, compliant with the central data austerity criterion of data protection. The German government awarded Noller and Richard Hutton a patent for the system in February 2015. In 2009, Noller was elected chairman of the IAB Europe Policy Committee, where he represented the interests of the European internet industry to political committees at the continent level, influenced market developments, and responded to challenges to data privacy caused by data-driven internet business models. On 14 April 2011, the committee headed a broad coalition of associations, companies, and tech providers of the European online industry in presenting a self-regulation model to the public; it addressed the loophole regarding the realization of the ePrivacy directive towards the European Commission and sought to bring more transparency and control to consumers regarding online behavioral advertising. In appreciation of his activities and work, Noller was awarded the "Best Personality" award at the 2012 Marketing and Interactive Excellence Awards Europe. Since 2012 he is a columnist for the leading data driven-advertising blog ExchangeWire. In 2013 he was appointed to the Advisory Board to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, the , and to the Rheinland Palatine's state for digital development and culture. Besides the industrial aspects of data and data privacy, Stephan Noller takes part in the so-called post-privacy debate, and has commented regarding to what extent the classical data privacy model is applicable to today's internet usage scenarios.
