On the road to data privacy, there will be many stops for the data and brands want control.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Get your 3-letter acronym counter ready…

For brands collecting and (legally) leveraging 1P data for advertising purposes, the data journey is a long one with many stops along the way. Data may be collected in a CRM system and then moved to a DMP or CDP. From there it could be moved to AWS or another CDP (Customer Data Platform). For activation data could be matched to IDs from a DSP or SSP (potentially in a PMP).

The point is that along with an over reliance on acronyms, the data ecosystem is fragmented. This fragmentation has, until this point, made true data privacy difficult as encryption or hashing or anonymized IDs exists largely at each stop on the data highway. The privacy methodology, strengths and controls are only as strong as the weakest link and out of the hands of the data owners.

If I’m a data owner, I want to set my privacy and operational protocols and make sure they are upheld wherever my data is leveraged.

And now another 3-letter acronym MPC (Multi-Party Computation)

To make the dream scenario a reality our ecosystem needs a bit of upgrading to our privacy protocols. Companies are looking for a more secure and flexible form of encryption to increase the level of privacy as well as usability. Enter Multi-Party Computation (MPC) which provides the strongest form of encryption ever known or ever will be known to humankind. I won’t go down the rabbit hole on this, but here is a link to an excellent paper on MPC and its applications in the advertising ecosystem.

The second piece is the use of Homomorphic Encryption (HE) which is defined as the evaluation of arbitrary computations on encrypted data without decrypting it. This allows the application of SQL-like functions to two or more data sets without losing functionality. The combination of stronger and yet more flexible privacy and computation standards changes the way we can think of data security.

As a 1P data owner, I can encrypt my data and set my desired protocols to yield the appropriate actions when my data interacts with specific partners. For example:

1. 1P data provider agrees to match test with Identity Resolution provider: All data is encrypted, only match keys interact and no raw data is seen or shared.
2. Brand encrypts data and sends it to its agency to build cohorts for targeting and then moves these lists of IDs to a DSP or platform for execution. The data remains encrypted at all stops and does not lose any functionality or value.
3. Retailer has sales data it would like to share with certain partners, but needs a secure way to select specific bits of data and ensure the data cannot be seen by anyone besides the intended partner.

These are changes which must be made and are relatively easy to implement. Considering what is at risk for all stakeholders in the face of heightened regulations and dwindling options, change is inevitable.

And now the most important 3-letter acronym…$$$

Brands are working with its partners to preserve the increased utility they receive from leveraging 1P data for targeting, attribution and analytics. Brands also shoulder 100% of the responsibility for the privacy and security of its client data. In the coming months we will see brands begin to demand control of the privacy constraints of its data wherever it is leveraged. There cannot continue to be a disparate set of rules and workflows which separate a brand from its client data.

Here is how it’s going to work:

1. A brand with 1P data will leverage MPC/HE to make its data safe to move through the adtech and martech ecosystems.
2. Brands will (cough) encourage its partners to leverage the same technology which will allow the privacy constraints to be honored when computation is done with a partner or partners.
3. Brands will retain the value of their data and publishers will retain the CPMs they enjoy through more thorough bespoke targeting and reporting.

The technology is available today to provide a secure computation on encrypted data throughout the ecosystem. To keep the ad dollars flowing, brands, agencies, platforms and publishers will need to get on the same page to keep data secure and actionable.

What will be the acronym for the new look internet?