During a panel at the recent Cannes Lions, Tracy-Ann Lim, chief media officer at JPMorgan Chase, put it simply: “Winter is coming from a data privacy standpoint.”
In late April, Google delayed third-party cookie deprecation for the third time, extending what has now been a five-year waiting game into 2025. Does this latest delay mean marketers can relax, confident that their targeting tactics and reach KPIs are safe for now? Not quite.
Marketers are already dealing with the signal loss impacts of Apple, Firefox and Safari’s deprecation of cookies and other targeting signals.
And despite stalling tactics, privacy regulations are moving full steam ahead. New legislation for another three states went into effect on July 1. The rapid progression of privacy laws taking hold demonstrates a legislative urgency that Google’s signal deprecation timeline does not match.
The reality is that consumers want their privacy protected. They want relevant advertising but reject pay-to-play models for content consumption.
If you’re looking to steel yourself against the coming winter, don’t look at other tech platforms. Instead, advertisers need to set their own pace to keep up with the rapidly shifting climate around privacy.
Decoupling privacy and signal loss
Remember: Privacy regulation and signal deprecation are not the same thing.
Privacy regulations govern how consumer data is ethically and legally used, focusing on safeguarding consumer rights and ensuring strict compliance with the law. Signal loss pertains to the technological adaptations required due to the phasing out of traditional tracking methods like cookies.
By treating these issues as synonymous, the industry risks assuming that technical solutions designed to counteract signal loss will automatically align with privacy regulations. They won’t.
Adaptations made for signal loss do not inherently address or guarantee compliance with privacy laws, either presently or in the future. Privacy is a more stringent standard that is evolving even more quickly than the tech that governs ad targeting and measurement.
Privacy marches ahead
For example, Nevada and Washington adopted privacy laws that are more focused on health data, whereas states like Utah, Oregon and Texas have emphasized more comprehensive data protections.
Moreover, the anticipated American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) aims to create a federal law regulating data privacy. Federal legislation would preempt the current state-by-state approach. But like cookie deprecation, the passage of a federal law is also moving on a slower timeline than state regulations, necessitating advertising strategies to account for both.
One thing is certain – privacy regulators mean business, and their timelines will not be pushed back. If anything, they are accelerating. Enforcement of those laws has already begun, which means that advertisers, technology companies and data providers need to pay attention or risk ending up in deep water with enforcement officers.
Future-proof for the right future
If advertisers don’t adopt strategies in adherence with the strictest privacy laws, they are likely looking at a future of continuous pivots, wasting time and money and hindering business outcomes.
Without an advertising strategy that focuses on the evolving landscape of privacy regulations, one-off pivot strategies that only address the next legislative or technology change may become obsolete soon after they are implemented.
It’s not about guessing whether your current strategy will continue to be viable after new legislation is enacted, it’s about preparing for a future where privacy is paramount.
The evolving regulatory environment underscores the need to move beyond temporary fixes and workarounds that merely replace old identifiers with new ones. Advertisers need to embrace sustainable, privacy-first strategies that can withstand regulatory scrutiny and consumer expectations.
Instead of developing parallel strategies for every issue related to signal loss, one option is using an ID-free infrastructure, such as AI-powered contextual audiences, for media targeting and measurement.
This unified approach simplifies compliance and technological upgrades and enhances consumer trust by prioritizing privacy at the core of all operations. It thereby future-proofs business practices against current and upcoming changes in the digital landscape.
In the privacy landscape, those who adapt proactively will avoid the pitfalls of constant pivots and build greater resilience that will help them survive the coming privacy winter.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
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