CCPA (California Customer Privacy Act) 

As you may have heard, CCPA (California Customer Privacy Act) goes into effect in the new year (January 1st, 2020). This regulation requires brands to clearly expose what personal data is being collected and how it is used. Brands must also comply with a user’s “right to deletion” of personal information used by the brand (inclusive of media targeting).

Although CCPA currently applies only to California, it is likely to gain momentum and expand to other states and, possibly even, federal regulation. To avoid fines, which can be up to $7,500 per violation — each user counting as an independent violation — brands must think about and plan for how they will achieve overall CCPA compliance of consumer rights (key CCPA user rights listed below):

  • Know what personal information is being collected on them
  • Know if that information is being sold and to whom
  • Opt-out of information being sold
  • Obtain a copy of their personal information
  • Request deletion of personal information
  • Receive equal service and price regardless of whether they exert the above rights
  • Sue for damages if their personal information is breached 

Blocking of Tracking Cookies?

In addition to CCPA regulations, the industry is also seeing a seismic shift in how cookies are treated. 

Recently, Apple has spearheaded a notable change in web tracking with its deployment of ITP (Intelligent Tracking Prevention). ITP impacts the effectiveness of cookie-based tracking within Safari browsers. Over the years, Apple has continued to upgrade ITP (now ITP 2.3) as marketers maneuver to find “loopholes” within a system that has significantly shortened the lifespan of cookies used to accurately track and attribute digital data (primary cookie impacts listed below):

  • 3rd Party Cookies: Blocked
  • 1st Party Tracking Cookies: Expire within 24 hours
  • All other 1st Party Cookies: Expire within 7-days (previously this was 180-days)

Currently, we are seeing about 3-6% of performance metrics impacted by ITP. However, this is a number that is only going to increase over time. This especially rings true with Apple not being alone in their effort: Both Chrome and Firefox are already testing blocking 3rd party cookies. 

Due to this increased adoption, it’s not a far leap to infer that it is just a matter of time before 1st party cookies are limited within Chrome and Firefox as well.  

What Can You Do Today To Prepare For Increased Government & Bowser Privacy Regulations? 

The answer is to begin treating 1st party data as your most valuable asset. Whether it is used to directly communicate with your current user base or to increase brand penetration and reach high-quality lookalike audiences.

By being able to collect, store and integrate your brand’s user-level customer data in a secure and privacy-compliant way, you will be able to move beyond complete cookie reliance while using reliable 1st party data to better know and market to actual people, not just cookies. 

Making the shift past cookies and towards privacy-compliant user-level data opens up a new realm of possibilities with actionable and granular audience analyses, insights, targeting, messaging, personalization, and more. 

So What’s Next? 

Just by reading this, you are already ahead of your competition. As data regulations continue to tighten and reach critical mass, brands will be scrambling to onboard with integrated 1st party data and martech solutions. However, their data will only be from the date of implementation, and, therefore, limited in size.

By beginning to critically think about and plan for this future now, you will be able to uniquely position your brand for continued success by being at the forefront of taking control of your data. So when the pivotal privacy crossroads are met, you will be ahead of your competitors with sophisticated 1st party data systems used to understand, measure, and activate your actual customers.

If you would like more information on how to prepare for the future of data privacy and to set up your 1st party data ecosystem, please reach out to us at [email protected] and we will help guide you through the process.

 

– Joe Belafonte, Director of Analytics