Advertising’s plastic straws problem: Getting rid of toxic waste beyond cookies
Opinion
The industry has been over-reliant on cookies for too long. But they’ve become a distraction while larger, more damaging practices have continued unchallenged. It’s not really about cookies — it’s about privacy.
As the ad industry has grappled with issues of data privacy in recent years, too much of the focus has been on the third-party cookie and how it represents everything bad about legacy digital advertising techniques.
Cookies are bad and the industry has been over-reliant on them for far too long. But they’ve become a distraction while larger, more damaging practices have continued unchallenged. Calling for cookies to be switched off is the equivalent of calling for plastic straws to be banned while ignoring huge volumes of toxic waste being dumped into the ocean.
It’s time for the industry to eliminate the widespread privacy violations still commonplace across the ecosystem.
Tackling data brokers
There are dozens of data brokers around the world and while many do so completely legally, there are others that operate in the shadows.
In a lot of cases, consumers have never even heard of these organisations, so have certainly not explicitly consented to their information being sold. Getting data removed from such databases is an onerous task that individuals must undertake on a case-by-case basis under the right to erasure section of GDPR.
In the US, laws such as the California Delete Act promise a universal opt-out system for consumers, backed by a state-run registry of data brokers. However, this still puts the onus on the individual to protect their data.
Any truly ethical system should be based on consumers actively consenting to having their data collected and traded.
Challenging privacy washers
Even worse, some organisations that have engaged in data brokerage are now seeking to portray themselves as champions of privacy. They’ve co-opted terms such as “data clean room” while continuing to engage in unsafe practices, such as co-mingling and centralising consumer data.
Privacy-washing is a huge problem for the industry — every bit as bad as selling consumer data without consent. Relying on insecure processes and outdated technology is a poor state of affairs in itself, without trying to hide behind labels such as “privacy-centric” or “privacy-first”.
Ending reliance on legacy technologies
Even businesses that aren’t trying to use privacy as part of their marketing efforts need to check themselves.
Any kind of data leak, exposure or misuse is likely to end in reputational damage and regulatory trouble. Just ask any of the dozens of companies that have unwittingly compromised customer data to their detriment.
There are no excuses for weak data policies and practices, and continued usage of any outdated technologies or third-party identifiers that compromise individual privacy is unacceptable. Even relying on the new breed of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) isn’t a silver bullet for protecting customer privacy in itself.
PETs: Cleaning up the industry
That said, used correctly, PETs do have a key role to play in cleaning up the industry and they can do so without compromising advertising performance. After all, organisations still need to get value from their customer data. And they can still ensure complete data privacy while doing this — if they approach it in the right way.
With third-party data no longer a realistic option, direct data collaborations based on first-party data are one of the best ways for advertisers to reach consumers. In such collaborations, customer data should never be shared or centralised — these conditions are the table stakes. That’s where PETs come in, involving techniques such as hashing and encryption, differential privacy techniques, private-set intersection, secure multi-party computation and synthetic ID generation.
With a multi-layered approach within the confines of a data clean room, advertisers and media owners can be certain they are fully respecting privacy without risk, while still executing high-performance campaigns.
Due diligence will expose the privacy washers
It’s not just their own processes and practices that advertisers and media owners need to be looking at. Getting your own house in order is the first step; organisations must then examine those of their partners.
It’s essential to establish which potential partners and vendors are walking the walk when it comes to privacy and which are the privacy washers. Any business with a sloppy approach or shoddy technology is not just putting itself at risk, but its collaborators too — and must therefore be avoided. Organisations that find themselves being sidelined by potential partners will soon get the message.
Moreover, it’s also important to have a global perspective when implementing privacy strategies. Many US technology businesses are seeing less success in highly regulated regions like Europe because they haven’t had to live through GDPR. Conversely, businesses that were built to support compliance with GDPR are now seeing adoption in the US, where regulation is increasing.
Respect for consumers must be prioritised
While the vast majority of organisations understand that customers will abandon them if data isn’t properly protected, it’s important they realise ensuring consumer privacy isn’t just good business practice or a regulatory obligation. It’s much more important than that. Simply put: looking after customer data is the right thing to do.
In the old ways of doing things, the digital advertising industry treated consumers as an afterthought. Now, they should be front and centre.
Evidence suggests almost half of consumers feel safe sharing their data with companies as long as they can do so on their own terms. This means any entity that collects consumer data needs to have appropriate consent mechanisms in place and there must be clear communication about exactly what data is being collected, how it is being stored and how organisations plan to utilise that data.
This isn’t exactly revolutionary thinking — it’s little more than common decency — but treating consumers with respect has to be a priority for the industry as a whole.
We have to solve the industry’s privacy challenges
The change that our industry has been going through in recent years was never about cookies — it was about privacy. It’s time for us all to look at the big picture and ensure there’s an overhaul of all practices that compromise consumer data.
There are still big battles to be fought against businesses that sell consumer data while claiming to be privacy-centric platforms. Clamping down on them is only part of the solution, though.
To lead advertising into a new era, we need to do better with consent, transparency, technology and respecting customers. Only then will we have truly cleaned up the advertising ecosystem.
Lauren Wetzel is the CEO of InfoSum