Becoming a Privacy-Centric Marketing Organization

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Advance Praise

Consumer expectations of privacy and government regulations are reshaping the way advertisers approach their day-to-day work. The InfoTrust team provides insight into the new marketing reality and actionable steps readers can take to be more successful today.

—Kevin Hartman, Chief Analytics Evangelist at Google

The fear of the unknown can be paralyzing for a business and their partners, but as the InfoTrust team illustrates, the unknown can be an opportunity (and advantage) for those who mindfully plan ahead.

—Jon Euerle, Measurement Product Manager, Enterprise Digital Capabilities at General Mills

Long, Loban, Oldham, and Yastrebenetsky combine their diverse professional experiences to help enterprise organizations understand where to start when it comes to privacy, as well as a road map for maturing their own expertise in the space. A must-read for all marketers going forward to understand the dos and don’ts of personal data collection.

—Caroline Basyn, Strategy & Transformation Europe at PepsiCo

As privacy moves to the forefront of marketers’ minds, this book serves as an excellent blueprint for those attempting to navigate increasingly complicated data collection waters.

—Soumyadeb Mitra, Founder & CEO at RudderStack

The marketing landscape continues to change dramatically as data privacy takes its rightful place in the public’s consciousness. Crawl, Walk, Run helps craft the path forward for the enlightened marketer and publisher to evolve.

—Adam Symson, President, Chief Executive Officer at The E.W. Scripps Company

With shifting expectations around consumer data and privacy legislation, marketers are actively rethinking how they approach their data collection strategies. Michael Loban and team provide a detailed look at this new privacy-centric landscape and provide useable recommendations that can be followed by senior executives today.

—Peter Fader, Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, co-founder and director of Theta, and co-author of The Customer-Base Audit

After simplifying the extremely technical aspects of Google Marketing Platform in their last Crawl, Walk, Run book, the InfoTrust team has done it again, helping marketers to better understand the privacy-related challenges (and solutions) that lie ahead.

—FD Wilder, Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company and Adjunct Faculty (Exec Ed) at Harvard Business School

The InfoTrust team goes well beyond simple consumer privacy compliance in their newest Crawl, Walk, Run book, enabling advertisers to craft a durable first-party data strategy that can power marketing engines well into the future. While their first book is a must-read (and is currently sitting on my desk), this book goes even further and is all the more relevant today as privacy-related legislation and corporate actions change the competitive landscape.

—Daniel McCarthy, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and Co-Founder at Theta

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Copyright © 2023 Lucas Long, Michael Loban, Alex Yastrebenetsky, Kent Oldham

All rights reserved.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-5445-3961-4

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At InfoTrust, we champion a culture of experimentation in the face of the new privacy-centric reality. By fearlessly testing new marketing strategies, you can future-proof your organization. In the spirit of practicing what we preach, we present our very own Crawl, Walk, Run: Becoming a Privacy-Centric Marketing Organization NFT. To access it, use the QR code below.

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Contents

Introduction

1. The New World of Data Privacy

2. Principles of User Privacy

3. Transform Your Organization to Meet the New Realities

4. Five Steps to Start Right Now

5. Data Collection in the Privacy-Centric Reality

6. Uncover Insights and Take Action with Your Data in a Privacy-Centric World

7. Privacy-Centricity for Your Industry

8. Design Your Future-Proof Organization

The Next Step

Authors and Contributors

Acknowledgments

Disclaimer

The information covered in this book is not intended to be legal advice or counsel. You should not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any content included in this book regarding legal compliance without obtaining appropriate legal guidance. The contents of this book contain general information related to various laws and regulations, but may not reflect your current situation. In addition, applicable laws and regulations regularly change. This is particularly true with respect to data privacy laws and regulations. Therefore, any laws and regulations described or otherwise referenced in this book may not be current when you read the book or even at the time of publication. We disclaim all liability for actions you take or fail to take based on anything in this book. Any action you take or any action you refrain from taking based on the information in this book is entirely at your own discretion and risk.

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Introduction

The Privacy-Centric Reality

On December 31, 2019, a marketer at an enterprise company in California could do (nearly) whatever they wanted with consumer data. Their only real limitation was their own imagination. A marketer could monitor a user’s activity across any website and could even follow them across the internet, using cookies to identify and target them with ads for their product. They could buy and sell user data to third parties for profit or analysis. All this, without needing to ask for user consent or provide the option to opt out. Most consumers had no idea that their data was valuable, let alone actively bought and sold without their knowledge. It was the wild west of data collection, and nearly every organization big and small was capitalizing.

That is, until the next morning.

When that same marketer awoke on January 1, 2020, their job was much more difficult than the day before. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) officially went into effect, changing marketing in the state overnight. Suddenly, large organizations had to disclose to their California-based users whether they were selling their information. And if so, they had to disclose what information was being sold to whom, and how it was used. Further, they had to give them the choice to opt out, meaning users could choose not to allow their data to be sold. And if that wasn’t complicated enough, a California-based user could now ask for access to their data history—a request that seemed simple enough on the surface but proved to be a logistical nightmare.

The CCPA affects most advertisers at large organizations who market to consumers in California, regardless of where the company is based—which means it impacts a great deal of organizations. However, it’s just one of many similar regulations across the globe that have put marketers in a tricky position: fail to comply and risk tarnishing the organization’s reputation or comply and explain to upper management why their strategy is no longer effective.

Many marketers have come to us at InfoTrust looking for advice. As a privacy-centric digital analytics company, these marketers are hoping we have a few tricks up our sleeves to help them maneuver around compliance issues. When we tell them that these regulations aren’t going away and that the best move is to become compliant, they explain that they feel that their hands are tied between expectations of the organization to produce results and legal requirements.

But for those who continue with the status quo, it won’t be long before the danger of non-compliance outweighs the benefits.

In late August of 2022, a global beauty retailer continued to sell users’ personal information past the compliance date issued by the CCPA. Not only did this company fail to give the user the option to opt out, but they even failed to inform users they were collecting and selling their data at all. The California Attorney General gave the organization 30 days to become compliant. They chose not to do so.1

In response, the state of California slapped them with a $1.2 million fine. But for a company worth $10 billion, the money wasn’t the issue. You can make an argument that from an advertising standpoint, $1.2 million is a small price to pay for the targeting enhancements gained with customer data. The real problem is that the company made headlines for nearly six weeks after the incident.

Consider the fine just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, there is first the cost to become compliant. Based on how close to compliance the organization may or may not be, this can be a considerable investment. Then there is the cost of responding to the incident. Depending on how much media attention the upset has caused, this can become expensive. Finally, there is the loss of revenue from brand equity damage. While the total impact for this particular organization is yet to be seen (as we write this book in the fourth quarter of 2022), they are now in the unfortunate position of finding out just how much consumers care about their privacy. It’s safe to assume that after the media picked up the story, the entire marketing department was working overtime to find a solution.

In a 2021 study by Adobe, two-thirds of respondents said that they would stop buying from brands that misused their data.2 Granted, people often overstate their intentions in surveys like this. The actual fallout could be less. But this theory is proven again and again every time a negative story is linked to an organization.

Just how costly consumer data non-compliance could be in the future is unknown. When making decisions around compliance (or willful non-compliance), take time to consider your organization’s risk tolerance when it comes to bad PR and multimillion-dollar fines.

If your organization is still non-compliant (or if you have no clue whether you are or not), know you aren’t alone. Many large companies still rely on third-party data. And as state and national governments crack down on violations, we’ll likely see more and more companies navigating the fallout caused by ignoring legal requirements.

Who We Are and What We Do

InfoTrust has spent more than a decade in the digital space as a consulting firm in digital analytics and data privacy. We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to consumer data acquisition, compliance, and use. We know what organizations need and we also understand what consumers demand.

Our specific insight comes at a time when a confluence of skills is necessary to revamp your data strategy. Some organizations work with legal teams. Others specialize in data. Many operate in media. But over the last ten years, we’ve positioned ourselves at the intersection of all three, right when organizations need that specialty.

We are the largest independent Google Marketing Platform Sales Partner in our industry of analytics services. We work closely with Google to publish content on martech stack durability and privacy-centric marketing. We also host and participate in events and summits that feature digital analytics and privacy thought leaders from our team at InfoTrust, Google, and some of the world’s most recognizable brands.

We’re a consulting firm in digital analytics, but we’ve also built a product that brings visibility to data being collected on digital properties. During development of Tag Inspector—our proprietary tag auditing and monitoring platform—we worked closely with compliance and legal teams. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone else on the planet that has analyzed more data collection architectures than our team.

This book is authored by four of us, all members of the InfoTrust team, including the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Alex Yastrebenetsky, Chief Growth Officer and co-founder Michael Loban, Director of Privacy Strategy Lucas Long, and Chief Operating Officer Kent Oldham. In addition to hearing directly from us, you’ll hear from trusted members of our team. We proudly feature our colleagues’ biographies at the beginning of a handful of chapters. Read them to find out why each contributor is at the forefront of data strategy and is distinguished in their respective field.

To get the most out of this book, check out our privacy-centric marketing enablement portal. The portal isn’t merely additional information on data strategy—it’s your ticket into our world. It’s updated with the most current information curated by our incredible team. It includes industry-specific advice on location-dependent regulations and on building durable first-party data strategies. The Portal unlocks free access to hyper-relevant content that we simply can’t include in this book. Access it while you read and remember to check back periodically to stay ahead in your market.

Use the QR code to access the portal.

As a marketer, you are in an extremely tough position. Losing access to insight from third-party data is truly a major disruption in marketing. But the wonderful thing about disruption is that for those who are willing to adapt, it can be a moment of true innovation.

This moment of disruption allows organizations to leverage new privacy standards to gain a competitive advantage in their marketplace. Updating your data collection strategy doesn’t have to negatively impact the bottom line. For those that are willing to test, refine, and explore new possibilities, the new world of data privacy can be an incredible opportunity.