Over the past decade the advertising industry has faced and overcome multiple obstacles and challenges. However, the biggest and most essential change is yet to come, with the strong movement towards user privacy many methods that are used nowadays will have to be adapted.

Overview of significant milestones in the history of data privacy

The initial case of planet 49 that was discussed at the European court of justice, ignited this movement. It was the spark that not only involved the advertising industry or the relevant legal parties, but the entire population. It made users question what actually happens with their data and how much privacy they have. The consent that a user gives to access data is a value exchange, one that despite the debate, over 70% of users are happy with. Nevertheless, on the other side users want to browse in a privacy safe environment. But what does that actually mean and how is it possible to create an environment that is privacy safe, but still of value to advertisers?

Web browsers are currently focusing on this topic, either already blocking all third-party cookies/ data via ITP or ETP (Safari & Firefox) or having announced (Google) that until 2024 the era is coming to an end. The following initiatives are set out to find a solution to this.

Along with other alternatives and the development of Google Privacy Sandbox, automation and machine learning is an important topic. Through democratizing and leveraging the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence companies can solve their biggest business challenges, by building a scalable data science platform. However, this cannot fully replace what the third-party cookie has been, but it at least poses a good alternative when used together with first party data.

The path to first party data strategies

The past milestones depicted a clear path for the future, one that is privacy safe and that focuses on different aspects to achieve similar results. One of the biggest topics was the shift from the third-party data to the first party data. This means that companies should focus their advertising strategies on the data that they already have on their customers, rather than using data from external sources, resulting in privacy, but at the same time still enables efficient marketing measures. Through this shift, privacy can be guaranteed to the user, since companies only use data that was directly obtained. Hence, it is important for companies to become independent of third-party data in the future.

However, until the future comes companies still have to focus on obtaining consent and being compliant with the data privacy regulations at date. This means that they should focus on implementing a consent management platform or using other technologies e.g., Google’s consent mode, in order to assure that no personal data is tracked without a consent.

Hence, after analyzing and discussing how to best react to the changes and challenges, the situation will not be the end of online advertising, but can much rather be seen as an opportunity of a unique chance, to make advertising more relevant and more respected. The industry is revolutionizing and reinventing itself and can define this new era as privacy friendly, making advertisement more pleasant and valued respecting the legitimate right of the user.