Will the FTC review of COPPA impact privacy for all of us?

While many await the results of the FTC review of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), businesses are already planning for a future without behavioral targeting and new models are emerging around contextual advertising.

Why would a review of children’s privacy impact marketing for everyone? The higher standard for children is already determining online experiences, as in the split navigation on the Lego site. This is a sincere effort to separate adult commerce from child-oriented engagement, but the overall experience falls short. The only way around this two-pronged approach is to apply the higher standard for children’s data to all of us.

As new technologies emerge, it will become more difficult to draw distinctions:

• 93% of parents who use smart speakers think it’s important to know when their families’ voices are being recorded and what information is being recorded about them (Common Sense/SurveyMonkey)
• 81% globally and 92% of US children have an online presence before they are two years old (Wired)
• 95% of US teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% are online an average of nine hours a day (Pew Research Center)

Behavioral marketing, which relies on data collection through cookies and other methods, has been viewed increasingly critically through a brand, data, and legal lens. In addition to COPPA, regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and others under consideration will make it more challenging and expensive to respond and comply. With increased enforcement demonstrated by the YouTube settlement, companies ignore these regulations at their peril. So, many businesses are reworking their engagement models — and in a way, treating us with the same care as they would children — which, within the context of privacy, is a good thing.

Practically, cookie blocking technologies developed by Apple (ITP), Mozilla (ETP) and Google for Chrome are creating barriers for third-party cookies. In the future, customer engagement that is truly personalized may only be possible in a consensual relationship with a brand. That leaves marketers with contextual advertising to target new customers.

Several startups have been developing ML/AI driven solutions to increase the effectiveness of contextual advertising, optimized for the customer experience moment. The shifting privacy landscape has fueled a flurry of acquisitions as firms prepare their next gen contextual offerings — Oracle bought Grapeshot, DoubleVerify has acquired Leiki, and Integral Ad Science bought Admantx.

Ultimately, contextual experiences will not only support compliance, they will also build consumer trust and value. The negatives of behavioral advertising have long been ignored — over 35% of consumers have a negative reaction to retargeting, whereas less than 10% have revisited a retailer’s website as a result of seeing a retargeted ad. The promise of intelligent contextual targeting may present new opportunities to content providers and other businesses with unique insights into contextual consumer behavior.

For all of us, the focus on privacy for children promises a better brand experience that truly meets us where we are.