As a part of Piwik PRO’s forecast discussions, we asked the experts how privacy regulations affected businesses in 2022 and what we should expect this year.
Collecting data while respecting users’ privacy is a challenge for marketers, as there are many new regulations to follow. They are also updated and amended regularly, so keeping up with the news becomes increasingly important.
How to make sure your marketing strategy complies with the new laws and agreements?
We’ve asked our experts:
- Aurélie Pols, privacy engineer and DPO at mParticle
- Luiza Jarovsky, researcher and author of The Privacy Whisperer, the largest independent privacy newsletter
- Maciej Zawadziński, CEO at Piwik PRO
The most important privacy-related events of 2022
What were the key regulatory changes that influenced marketing in 2022? Our experts pointed to the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and post-Schrems II decisions regarding EU-US data transfers.
Moreover, Aurélie mentioned the fine imposed on Sephora for sharing data with third-party advertising networks and analytics providers. She also thinks that Japanese companies will become more privacy-compliant, as one company from there was fined for violating GDPR. Luiza pointed out that the speed at which new privacy legislation is planned and approved in the EU is also worth attention.
However, a key event took place at the beginning of 2023. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined Meta Ireland for breaches of GDPR – 210 million euros for Facebook and 180 million euros for Instagram. “This will change the industry, as lots of parties and courts might be involved,” summarizes Aurélie.
To know more about some of the latest privacy laws and regulations, read our thorough recap: 11 new privacy laws around the world and how they’ll affect your analytics
How to become more privacy-focused in 2023
Valuable marketing strategies should be built around privacy compliance. “For businesses to thrive, you need to have stability in the legal environment,” says Maciej. “Otherwise, you spend a lot of money on things that don’t create value.”
Luiza adds, “every team should be involved to understand the privacy regulations. We should work together to know what benefits we can bring to users, how privacy in tech works in practice, and how to implement it. That’s the way to be successful and privacy-compliant in 2023”.
Aurélie also puts her focus on working together within teams. “2023 is going to be a challenging year, but it’s about collaboration with smart people around you.”
Are data clean rooms the solution for personalized marketing without third-party cookies?
Data clean rooms are one of the latest inventions for collecting data without third-party cookies. These are pieces of software that allow for targeted advertising campaigns to be done in a privacy-friendly way.
To use a data clean room, two entities, for example, an advertiser and a publisher, upload first-party data. Then, the data is encrypted using various privacy protection measures, such as pseudonymization, restricted access, differential privacy, or noise injections. Both parties get information in the form of cohorts and aggregated reports. This process leads to data activation, which means the data can be used for lawful and targeted marketing.
To know more details about data clean rooms, we recommend reading this article from Clearcode: What Is a Data Clean Room and How Does It Work?
Data clean rooms promise personalization that doesn’t violate user privacy. They ensure that collected data stays within the data clean room and isn’t shared with anyone else. It all sounds perfectly safe, but is it compliant?
“The question is – can we get consent for doing that on our side? Probably the vendor will say yes, but I have some doubts about it and also about how the consent was collected,” says Maciej. Luiza adds, “from a legal perspective, we’re skeptical if anonymization is even possible.”
“If you act as a data clean room – you’re providing a handshake between a data processor and data controller. But isn’t it bringing obligations with respect to lawful bases before engaging in these handshakes?” wonders Aurélie. “Because of the purpose of data clean rooms – their obligations should actually be higher than data controllers.”
Marketing forecast for 2023: skills, technology & privacy
We hope this summary helps you understand the importance of cultivating privacy-oriented marketing and gives you some advice on achieving that. To learn more about our experts’ take on marketing trends for 2023, sign up for the whole series of on-demand video talks about essential marketing skills, regulatory changes, and key technologies.
