To reassure customers, regulators and tech firms are acting. The use of consumer data is already subject to restrictions imposed by laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union and the California Customer Privacy Act (CCPA).
For digital marketers, who may no longer be able to rely on cookies to increase the effectiveness of client engagement, this move is anticipated to have significant ramifications.
Marketers and businesses that fail to develop a plan to preserve and even expand their access to first-party data may need to increase their marketing and sales spending by 10% to 20% in order to achieve the same results.
Data-driven marketing should consequently be approached differently.
It’s not just about using workarounds or fixes for technological issues.
Instead, the secret to a long-lasting, successful data strategy may be a solid, trust-based relationship with clients.
Apple & Google’s Acceptance to Change
Over the course of a year, two of the biggest firms in the world have casually turned every marketing theory regarding digital marketing on its head. It’s not a huge deal, right?
Just a reminder: Early in 2021, Apple launched an update to iOS 14 that gave consumers the option of allowing advertising to track them across apps, thus reducing the reach of these ads. Google declared that beginning in early 2022, it would no longer support third-party cookies in the Chrome browser.
Is it even remotely shocking that $260 billion software and technology powerhouse Apple can discover a brand-new market to disrupt?
Not really, no.
However, the business went ahead and did it again, and this time, it’s causing a stir in the world of digital marketing.
Apple has redefined safety in the eyes of its customers by using the strength of its dominant market position (in the U.S.).
With iOS 14, which was initially released on September 16, 2020, Apple kept up its long-standing emphasis on heightened security. The company achieved this by letting users choose whether they wanted apps to track their activities across several iPhone applications.
What Privacy-first Marketing Means for Consumers
If you look at a pair of Nikes on your Amazon app and then visit Instagram, an advertisement for those exact shoes is likely to show up on your newsfeed.
If this situation appears familiar, it’s because your phone’s default settings permit cross-app monitoring. However, Apple is giving users the option to decide for themselves with the latest update.
There is really no negative impact on the overall experience for the customers who choose to opt in.
Due to their inclusion in general consumer categories, users who refuse to accept this feature are likely to start receiving significantly fewer relevant advertisements. Later, we’ll talk about that.
Related Reading: Digital Touchpoints Into Your Conversion Process: How We Do It
What Privacy-first Marketing Means for Marketers
First and foremost, not every marketer is impacted by this in the same way. This is essentially of no concern to B2B-focused marketers that handle the majority of their digital marketing on LinkedIn or by targeting using first-party data.
First-party data is information that users voluntarily share online. Because it has the most first-party data of any social media platform, LinkedIn is an effective tool for advertising.
Consider this: If you use LinkedIn, you probably change your profile whenever you get a new job. The majority of users don’t update their “About” pages on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok.
You will encounter some difficulties if you create your adverts based on user activity rather than demographics.
Today, you require each Apple user’s express consent to track activity across apps, and that’s pretty uncommon.
In fact, the majority of Apple customers are reportedly limiting app tracking, according to this TechRadar article: Even after the function had been available for two weeks, just about 5% of daily users in the US had chosen to be tracked, compared to 13% of iOS users worldwide.
Therefore, activity-based targeting has decreased by 95% of all Apple customers who are based in the US, who account for the majority of the US market, in one fell swoop.
However, there is a bright side. You can still target your audience; they are merely grouped together in order to safeguard people’s privacy.
So, with the exception of a few hiccups caused by Facebook upgrades necessary to adapt to the iOS update, targeting an audience still works largely in the same manner it did before, albeit with a smaller audience.
A Cookieless Future with Google Chrome
The difficulties brought on by Google’s announcement that they will stop allowing third-party tracking on its web browser, Chrome, dwarf those brought on by the iOS 14 issue (which has a majority market share in the US).
Third-party cookies monitor your internet activity on both computers and mobile devices. Apple’s iOS 14 upgrade lets you control how much an app can monitor your phone’s activity across other apps, while users of Google Chrome won’t be affected until 2022.
How Privacy-first Marketing Affects Consumers
Consumers will ultimately benefit from greater privacy and less pertinent advertising. You won’t be subjected to the hyper-targeted, almost mind-reading advertisements for the product you were just browsing at an online store.
You’ll see advertisements instead that are based on — you guessed it — your first-party data.
Once again, this is information about you that you voluntarily disclosed online. This can originate from your social media bios, keyword searches, affiliations and associations, and a variety of other sources.
How Privacy-first Marketing Affects Marketers
One of your first thoughts may be, “Unlike Apple, one of the main ways Google gets money is by being one of the most widely used ad platforms on the market. Why would they act in such a manner?
Isolation is the solution. Because consumers want privacy, businesses will give it to them.
Additionally, this regulation actually puts at least one of Google’s ad forms in a better position: the traditional Google AdWords.
Google searches are considered first-party data. When a customer searches for “the greatest plumber in Norway,” they are disclosing information about themselves (i.e., they need a plumber). So in 2022, keyword-targeted advertising will be quite popular.
Marketing professionals can also change with the times by gathering their own first-party data. Bring on the lead generation forms.
Give your clients what they want in exchange for their personal data. To obtain first and last names, emails, company names, addresses, and phone numbers, downloadables, discounts, and freebies are all excellent gated chances.
After gathering this first-party information, you may use it to market through email campaigns, post retargeting lists to social media sites, and more.
What The Future of Privacy-first Marketing Looks Like
Companies like Apple and Google wield a ton of power not only because of their obvious size and influence, but also because they have a lot of information on their consumers.
These policies to protect the privacy of customers help shine a better light on them while simultaneously protecting their users.
For us marketers, it’s simply another adjustment we need to make. The only constant is change, and this is yet another example of that truism.
Our audiences may be smaller than they were two years ago, and we may have to work a little harder but, ultimately, there is always a way to connect to the right audience.
Kilowott can help you with performance marketing objectives, keeping your data private and safe. Let’s talk digital marketing solutions.
