Marketing departments are acting now to meet growing privacy expectations, with a focus on internal organisational improvements.
Companies are increasingly aware of their responsibility to safeguard their customers’ data and protect their privacy. As a result, organisations are now structuring their businesses with privacy in mind – with the goal of going above and beyond the latest regulations to meet their customers' expectations.
In a report by Meta, ‘5 Steps to Redefine Performance in a Privacy-First World’, industry-leading marketing and advertising executives from Meta’s Global Client Councils reveal how their organisations are evolving to meet the changing privacy landscape. Here are the report’s top takeaways:
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By Albert Abello Lozano, head of automation, Treatwell
How the global ad industry is evolving to meet data privacy expectations
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One of the most notable themes of the report is how businesses are evolving to address data privacy. The nature of existing roles is transforming, and new positions are being created.
“We now have a data protection officer (DPO) at the global level as well as regional and local DPOs to support the unique data regulations in each market,” shares Havas’s global managing director, mx analytics, Jamie Seltzer. “They work with our teams to advise on the regulations and their implications on how we and our clients can collect data, the legal elements of data protection, and to answer questions about how our technology collects and processes data.”
The types of data available to brands are also changing due to industry developments, including Google phasing out tracking cookies – now expected to happen by 2024 – and Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework. This raises challenges for advertisers and their agencies around how they find new ways to optimise campaigns effectively in a privacy-first landscape.
“What used to be a comms planner has now become an audience planner and that has to do with the changing data landscape, the ability to model in more productive ways and because everything is becoming more addressable,” says GroupM’s global head of partnerships, managing director, Kieley Taylor.
“What used to be a routine consumer insights exercise has evolved to become machine learning around cohort analysis, with an expectation that they can also interpret outcomes. The changing data privacy landscape has really brought more prominence into our deliverables, what goes in the plan, the why of our thinking, and whether that means we need to create a new department.”
Corporate reorganisation
In a privacy-first landscape, the flow of data between different customer touchpoints is changing and that has major implications on how organisations plan, measure and then optimise campaigns.
“It gets complicated when we try to connect all the pipes across media touchpoints,” Publicis Epsilon’s Sirkin says in Meta’s report. “Even when the vision is perfect, the reality is so complicated and takes time.”
Many are adapting by using marketing mix modelling to attribute the contribution from each customer touchpoint to an uplift in sales through statistical models. Organisations are also planning and analysing campaigns by audience types – for example, measuring them across a geographic area.
Experimentation is key, as GroupM’s Taylor shares: “We structure test learning hypotheses together with our media investment teams. Because if the campaign’s not set up in a way that they can learn then it doesn’t make the cut. Ultimately, the organisation is aiming to build a repository of information for clients, and our own experiments inform that.”
Seltzer at Havas gives another example – comparing campaigns on Chrome, which still supports third-party cookies, and Safari, which does not.
“Running the same campaigns in Chrome and in Safari allows us to benchmark performance and obtain a meaningful understanding of metrics. We’re not just finding out how campaigns perform individually, but also how they perform against each other in terms of delivery metrics.
“With this comparative analysis we are able to examine if we are reaching the same types of audiences, getting the same type of delivery, and achieving the same clickthrough rates, view rates and more. We’ve put brand tracking metrics in place to understand the differences between cookie and cookieless audiences, and we've seen some pretty cool results.”
These are just a few examples that underline how, in a privacy-first world, advertisers are finding new ways to combine tools and methodologies across different media. If the industry leaders in Meta’s report are clear on one thing, it is that marketers who take action today are the ones who are best set up for success in the future. ■
Metrics, experimentation and collaboration
Another central theme in Meta’s report is how companies are placing their focus on the customer as they reorganise their teams.
“Marketers need to start the conversation about data privacy with the customer in mind. We need to ask ourselves, what do customers want from data privacy?” says Havas’s Seltzer.
Doing the right thing by them is about more than being legally compliant. More importantly, it is about trust. According to Cisco’s 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey, 81% of consumers agree the way a company treats personal data is indicative of how it views and respects its customers.
So, keeping the focus on customers requires businesses not only to protect consumer data rights, but also to inform people about how they collect information and how it leads to a better online experience. According to industry leaders, one of the main ways to build customer trust in today’s privacy-first landscape is to explain the value exchange offered through first-party data relationships with brands, such as a service that’s more relevant to them as an individual.
Roisin Donnelly: We need to really understand what the customer wants. What does the customer need? Who is the customer? What do we need to do to make it easier for the customer? I hope we can educate them better – we must be absolutely customer-obsessed in everything we do.
Michael Inpong: The number one rule for personalisation is delighting the customer. And part of delighting them is answering their desire for privacy. ■
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“What used to be a comms planner has now become an audience planner.”
— Kieley Taylor, GroupM
Putting the customer first
The full report, ‘5 Steps to Redefine Performance in a Privacy-First World’, is available here.
The report also touches on the shift to first-party data for fuelling ad personalisation and campaign optimisation. “First-party data is helping us create personalised experiences in a modern data world,” says Kate Sirkin, EVP of global data partnerships at Publicis Epsilon. “When we have that full view and we've got the sites tagged and first-party data flowing, we can see in real time or near real time the performance of campaigns – this is also where the most interesting understanding, personalisation, measurement and optimisation comes in.”
Advertisers are using first-party data to achieve a more direct and transparent relationship with customers. Customers have to choose to share first-part data with a brand, which means companies can use this data to reach customers they know are interested. Brands can get to know users better through insight on how they are interacting with their own products and services, in a privacy-first way.
Having a high-quality foundation can unlock stronger integration with first- and third-party data. This can lead to even more benefits for your marketing, such as: consistent definitions of audiences, measurement across the open web, stronger partnerships with more closed ecosystems for even better measurement and campaign effectiveness.
Investing in resilient data strategies
— Kate Sirkin, Publicis Epsilon
“First-party data is helping us create personalised experiences in a modern data world.”
— Jamie Seltzer, Havas
“Marketers need to start the conversation about data privacy with the customer in mind.”
The full report, ‘5 Steps to Redefine Performance in a Privacy-First World’, is available here.