GDPR Will Bring Fundamentally Better Advertising
If you live in Europe, you already know about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new regulation of consumer data that takes effect in May 2018. Its objective is to return control of data to the individual consumer, and it strikes fear into the hearts of businesses, especially marketers. Even if you are not in the EU, you are likely to be affected, as you cannot always tell when you are targeting a European consumer in a programmatic buy.
From Wikipedia:
The implementation of the EU GDPR will require comprehensive changes to business practices for companies that had not implemented a comparable level of privacy before the regulation entered into force (especially non-European companies handling EU personal data).
There is already a lack of privacy experts and knowledge as of today and new requirements might worsen the situation. Therefore education in data protection and privacy will be a critical factor for the success of the GDPR.
The European Commission and DPAs have to provide sufficient resources and power to enforce the implementation and a unique level of data protection has to be agreed upon by all European DPAs since a different interpretation of the regulation might still lead to different levels of privacy.
We’ve written about this before, but now we have a more optimistic take on it for marketers. We think that its implementation, once the kinks are ironed out, will allow not only for greater consumer privacy, but for more effective ad spend. Several companies are already trying to bridge the gap between consumers and advertisers with personal data solutions. In these solutions, the data stays with the consumer, who can then decide to share it with marketers who are relevant to her needs. It will truly lead to what Seth Godin called “permission-based marketing” a decade ago:
Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.
It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.
Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious. And there’s no way they can get their attention back if they change their mind. Attention becomes an important asset, something to be valued, not wasted.
Real permission is different from presumed or legalistic permission. Just because you somehow get my email address doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because I don’t complain doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because it’s in the fine print of your privacy policy doesn’t mean it’s permission either.
Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went.
ZEDO’s company tagline is “fundamentally better advertising.” We try for this in every product we develop. GDPR will help this become possible.
We’ll be writing more about personal data control solutions and brand advertising in the coming weeks. This is the most important thing to happen to advertising since the internet.
