‘Your information is for sale. You have become the product’
Do you realise the profound grimness of this statement? This isn’t a quote by a leader or a visionary, it is the copy on Apple’s new ad about their app tracking transparency feature. Yet, it hits home, for it is true!
The birth of the world wide web was the stepping stone into the information age and it was a golden period that helped the world stay connected, learn more, explore more, voice out more openly, and genuinely drove worldwide transformation. However, similar to our exploits with previously found superpowers – industry and oil/fossil fuels, we have mined it to an unfathomable extent. Akin to the need for sustainable alternatives and a circular economy to overcome our overconsumption, the need for privacy and data protection is imperative to create a safe, free and harmonious digital world not infested with ads and promotions.
Imagine this, you are talking to your girlfriend about what brand of face wash you should order, or what sneakers you should gift yourself, and immediately you are smacked in the face with an ad from a cosmetics brand and a shoe brand – HOW CREEPY IS THAT? How is it any different from a bunch of people stalking you home everyday and looking over your shoulder every second of every minute of every day?
For instance, watch this ad by apple, even though it is exaggerated to prove a point, it is true to the extent of apps tracking our every move and dishing out ads that are apparently “personalised” to us. This isn’t personalisation, this is a flagrant violation of consumer privacy.
Well, guess what, Apple and Google have lost their chill and rightly so.
Both these giants have made decisions that will have a lasting impact on the world of digital marketing and warrants a paradigm shift in the way marketers approach “targeted” advertising and have set a great precedent for companies to follow.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Update:
The latest iOS 14.6 update and the imminent iOS 15 update across 1.6 billion mobile and laptop/computer devices has rendered app tracking and ‘targeted’ advertising obsolete in one fell swoop.
Here’s how.
Previously, any app on your phone could track your data such as location, age, credit card information, preferences, interests and more. What’s worse? This data was made available for data brokers and advertisers to serve you with personalised advertisements.
Now, with the app tracking transparency update, you get to ‘OPT IN’ and choose whether or not you want to let an app track your data. The latest privacy dashboard Apple has proposed in iOS 15 gives a user access to a detailed overview about the nature of data extracted, how often it is done and who has access to this information. This gives you the ability to filter and stop any third party from accessing your data, truly lending meaning to the word privacy.
Similarly, with the mail privacy protection, the software stops senders from gathering data about users such as:
- IP address
- Open rate
- Time of open and more
Watch this video for more information.
A cookie-less world by Google Chrome
Google’s mission of ’do good’ is further emphasized by their decision to eliminate cookies altogether from their proprietary browser, Chrome.
The marketer in you would go, ‘OMG! How do we remarket and offer personalised ads?’, the answer is you don’t offer personalised ads based on a user’s profile, instead offer ads to an entire group of people with similar interests or in marketing jargon – cohorts.
Presenting FLoCs.
FLoC – Federated Learning of Cohorts replaces Cookies as personal identifiers, instead uses cohorts(groups of people with similar interests) to create user profiles thereby effectively masking a person’s identity while enabling personalised advertisements.
As a marketer and a consumer, these updates are bittersweet (more sweet than bitter), however, here’s how marketers need to adapt to changing times:
- Focus on ZPD-based strategies – Zero Party Data(ZPD) is the information shared willingly by consumers to make their app experience better – similar to how you share your interests as you log into netflix or spotify. ZPD provides very powerful insights into a user’s mind and behaviour and helps marketers create strategies that are personalised and yet non-infringing.
- Incentivise data sharing – Could you create a value proposition ecosystem where your users/consumers are incentivized to share valuable data that you can utilise for your marketing campaigns and advertising.
- Geo-tagging + Existing User profiles – Marketers could leverage a combination of geography based tagging/targeting among existing user profiles to identify cohorts and behaviour patterns to glean insights.
The precedent set by Apple and Google is important for creating a fair and just ecosystem, one that fosters real connections between users without being constantly tracked, hounded and sold to.
While these policies/reforms seem to be a step in the right direction, we will need to wait to see if these directly translate into a shift in the marketers’ mindset.
Stay tuned as we breakdown more information surrounding privacy, how it will affect digital marketers and our predictions for the future.
This article is part 1 of a 3-part series surrounding privacy and digital marketing.