Privacy vs. Personalization: Striking a Balance for Consumers and Businesses
Increasingly, provisions for privacy protection are emerging, leading to the need for any sustainable data strategy to be customer-centric. Models such as web cookies and Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) have revolutionized the way data is collected and used by improving the targeting of ads. However, these approaches can involve some degree of user privacy invasion.
As data is collected from every interaction and process, effective data management and privacy protection is increasingly important. As a result, both regulators and technology companies are beginning to take aggressive action to appease users.
Third-party cookies will soon be introduced into the history books
Web cookies were invented in 1994 to optimize the user’s Internet experience. Third-party cookies are a long-standing practice used by advertisers. The complete abandonment of cookies has been delayed until 2024 as advertisers need more time to transition to Google’s cookie replacement. Privacy Sandbox for the Web will gradually replace third-party cookies using the latest privacy technologies.
Google and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have agreed that more time is needed to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sand Box before abandoning third-party cookies in Chrome.
Meanwhile, Google also provides “Privacy Sandbox Timeline for the Web”. This timeline is updated once a month to help everyone understand the different stages of cookie replacement development.
While looking through the official website introducing Privacy Sandbox for the Web, I came across Google’s proposal on the following two topics.
I believe these proposals will provide disruptive solutions for the advertising industry in the future.
Apple’s new system operation offers extensive privacy protections
Apple has Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) to help enable ad targeting and evaluation. But at the same time, Apple has been an industry leader in privacy protection. Since 2018, Apple has been introducing the latest privacy protection features in every system update. IOS 15 and iPadOS 15 introduce eight new privacy and security features in this update alone. But in reality, even though Apple’s reasons for privacy concerns are noble, its design of the system may still be subject to controversy.
More States Begin to Introduce Privacy Acts
With the enactment of bills such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), more and more states are introducing measures to give consumers the right to set up access and opt out of the sale of personal information. The map below shows the progress of state legislation for privacy protection. This is the big trend that is happening in the United States.
Will users feel more secure?
For most users, privacy and data security is a very delicate and impenetrable matter. Only about one-third of users believe that companies are using their user information in a responsible manner.
When users realize that they live in a surveillance society, it is easy to feel tied down every time they go online to explore different things. Users will be curious about the world, but at the same time they will think fast and worry that their search history will be monitored/stay in the world forever. But at the same time, users can definitely enjoy the magic of data algorithms. This is due to the fact that more data information will increase the precision and accuracy of data analysis and allow users to enjoy the convenience.
As the world becomes increasingly focused on regulating the protection of individual user information, users will enjoy greater peace of mind with technological safeguards. Users’ pursuit of personal privacy security and privacy is also promoting the development of the entire privacy protection industry.
Marketers need to rely on data to thrive
Marketers rely on precision placement to cut costs while maximizing the effectiveness of their advertising efforts. The advertising industry is optimizing the best platforms for connecting with audiences by constantly exploring new channels. However, the user privacy and security industry is closely tied to the availability of user data, which means that any changes to the user data ecosystem will directly impact marketers. The disappearance of smart tracking methods such as cookies makes it impossible for marketers to continue to rely on it for customer value. According to McKinsey research, companies will need to increase their marketing and sales spend by nearly 10–20% in the new environment to achieve the previous level of return.
The basis of everything, therefore, is that marketers must understand the need to always respond to changes in laws and regulations to seize the opportunity of how to maximize marketing strategies in a privacy-first world. Building more transparent and strong relationships with customers will be increasingly important if marketers need to move towards the full use of clean, first-hand data in the future. In fact, I’m sure there are demands from the advertising industry, such as marketers, advertisers and publishers, that will drive data platforms to redesign data solutions!
