Privacy has been a hot topic for over a decade now. From the ePrivacy Directive (aka the “cookie law”) to GDPR and CCPA, privacy laws have come into effect mostly as a reactive measure to bad practices. It was scandals like Cambridge Analytica that made the public aware of how their data were being shared (and sold) and the control that ecosystems like Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon have accumulated.

On the technology side, marketing and ad technologies slowly added more data points and utilized tracking technologies (from third-party cookies to probabilistic modeling and technographics for fingerprinting) to ensure a highly targeted and personalized experience. However, the way marketers have achieved the Holy Grail of personalization has not always been transparent to the customer. Today, an average user receives 24 emails with tracking pixels per day and around 10 cookies per visited website. Those are staggering if not alarming figures, which few users realize. The era of surveillance advertising is coming to an end, though, and that is good for both consumers and brands.

Surveillance advertising is dead; enter privacy

Privacy has taken center stage, accelerated by tech giants like Apple and Google. From the end of third-party cookie support for Google Chrome by 2023 (Apple’s Safari stopped supporting third-party cookies long ago) to the latest iOS changes that are rapidly changing the ad-tech and mar-tech ecosystems. In iOS 14.5, Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency which requires all apps to obtain permission before tracking users. This led 96% of users in the U.S. to opt out of tracking, a move seen by many as a direct challenge to Facebook.

And with the latest iOS 15 release, Apple seems to push the privacy agenda further with several privacy-related features. The ones that stand out are:

Mail Privacy Protection will mask IP addresses of email users, limit information on opens and block pixel tracking.

Privacy Report will allow users to see how often each app has access their location, photos, camera, microphone and contacts during the past seven days.

iCloud+ Private Relay blocks IP tracking and fingerprinting techniques (Google is also working on a similar feature as part of its Privacy Sandbox). The technology behind this function is Apple’s dual-hop proxy implementation. It uses an Ingress and an Egress Proxy to keep user IP and browser history anonymous so no single entity can identify the user and the sites they visit.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention extensions that will prevent trackers from obtaining a user’s IP address to guess a location or try to track them across pages or sites.

Hide My Email, another iCloud+ feature, that will create random, temporary email addresses to mask a user’s email address. This will effectively allow users to unsubscribe from any user list, while blocking techniques that identify users based on their hashed emails

Brands need new, privacy-focused approaches to reach customers

This will be a challenge to navigate, specifically for organizations that rely on opens and IP addresses to track performance, attribute value based on opens or build behavioral profiles. However, there’s a broader context to consider about where the market is heading. Organizations need to combine enhanced privacy controls and empower users, while still creating personalized experiences.

In this delicate balancing act, marketers need to implement a long-term strategy and focus more on first-party data, enhanced security and privacy, and high-quality content that drives impact down the funnel.

Some key trends related to that bigger picture are already in play, such as:

• A move from relying on third-party data to first-party data. This will accelerate the move from data management platforms (DMPs) to customer data platforms (CDPs) and allow marketers to unlock the value of owned data.
• New technologies will emerge such as Google’s FLoC behavioral targeting or open initiatives like Unified ID 2.0 (UID2). It’s still too early to predict which ones will be successful as key players will try to expand their dominance.
• Attribution modeling and proxy metrics of marketing’s impact will be reconsidered for their efficiency, especially in paid media channels.
• Contextual targeting will re-emerge as critical to marry context with content when driving personalized experiences.
• Stronger collaboration and data sharing between advertisers and publishers will replace reliance on third-party data. 
• More emphasis on precise content to compensate for the loss of tracking precision of content.

This is a challenging new world, but it is not the first time that technological or legal changes have affected customer engagement. The difference is that today’s changes give customers more control and transparency over their data, something we should all embrace.

The need for quality content, specifically how to talk to customers, and cross communications will continue to grow and become more relevant in a privacy-first world. At Persado, we see an opportunity to regain customer confidence and provide personalized experiences on the foundation of customer trust, which every brand and marketer should welcome.