The “battle cry” far and wide has been about consumers of the internet’s privacy. CEO after CEO has been paraded through Washington to be cross-examined about what information their company is collecting on “unknowing” users. As consumers we appreciate the guard. As marketers, it makes our job tougher.
Nobody knows at this point where this is all sorting out, but we do know this much:
- Google will not allow tracking cookies to be planted across third-party websites users visit when using their Chrome browser. Since Chrome has over 58% world use, this is a big deal.
- What does this mean to you? Being able to advertise just to those prospects who visit certain third-party websites having keywords that are important to marketing your product will no longer be available on the Chrome browser. Google will still track users habits on its own sites including YouTube.
- Trade Desk, the relatively new start-up that is taking some business from Google in the Display Advertising category sees this as self-serving by Google and isn’t sure that they will fully go ahead with it.
- Safari and Firefox stopped providing third-party user data a year or two ago.
- Apple is going to enforce some privacy settings on iPhone’s that will prevent Facebook from collecting certain data from app use that are important to its ability to target advertising.
As Big Tech in-fights and battles Congress you should take note and set strategy for this year. If you are planning ad campaigns with tight targeting parameters, then now is the time to do it based on these forthcoming changes. Using consumers’ behavior in any fashion in the future may be severely curtailed.
Our job right now is not to be the judge of ethics but to market our product and/or services as efficiently and effectively as we can. Use of consumer data is being scrutinized and, in some cases, discontinued by choice or by law. Put this information into your marketing mix now to get your best results.
Onward and upward!
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