In preparation for next week’s Business of Digital: The First Party Reality – The New Rules of Engagement, we sat down with IAB Canada member and topic sponsor, Didomi to get their unique take on the critical and ever-changing role that consent management platforms play in first party data management. We were also keen to hear about how, as a young and rapidly growing organization, they have widened their focus to help the industry prepare for a cookieless future in a privacy-first way.
IABC: How has the role of the Consent Management Platform (CMP) changed and evolved to allow for a more scalable approach to first party data management?
DIDOMI: The end of the third-party cookie is inevitable and data privacy regulations are now in full force globally, growing more varied and complex each year. Because of these changes, the “cookie” focused approach to consent is no longer sufficient. A successful CMP must offer identification of all third parties, scripts, beacons, pixels, as well as legal and non-legal consents, and multiple integration options to allow for a more scalable approach to first party data management.
In addition, the introduction of customer preference management provides greater value to consent as a whole. With a CMP and a Preference Management Platform in place, a company can gain a broader view of what consumers want, provide them with a personalized and positive experience, and increase transparency from a legal perspective.
IABC: How do you help your clients balance both jurisdictional obligations and building consumer trust?
DIDOMI: Didomi’s goal is to deliver a tool that gives our customers the ability to comply with GDPR and PIPEDA from their understanding of the law, not simply our point of view. We place a key focus on flexibility in terms of setup and deployment of the CMP and help guide our customers through this process. Once this is in place, our next key objective is to provide our customers with analytical data behind their consent notices.
By providing comprehensive analytics that help answer questions like “How are the consent notices performing?”, “Where is the consent rate higher and lower?”, “What changes have increased consent rates?”, we aim to provide analytics that our customers can use to make informed decisions about consent and provide the best experience to their users. Small adjustments can make all the difference in consent rates and understanding where and when to apply these changes is key to a positive consent experience. By focusing on legal compliance and providing a positive experience for the end-user, we help our clients build customer trust.
IABC: With the cookie deprecation on the horizon – and a need for personalized marketing – what should brands and publishers be doing today to get ahead of the curve?
DIDOMI: Brands and publishers should make privacy a positive experience for their users and invest in preference management to successfully prepare for a cookieless future. Here are three steps you can take now to get ahead of the curve:
1. Invest in consent and preference management technologies
The end of third-party cookies will leave you totally blind to user behavior unless you adopt the “just ask” method. Future-proof your data strategy and put your users in the driver’s seat and give choice about tracking on websites.
Among the many innovative solutions, there are consent and preference management innovators like Didomi, who can help you build and maintain a powerful Preference Center which gives users granular control over their communication and data preferences.
These tools make user experience more fluid and the process of consent collection easier, allowing companies to place privacy at the architectural and strategic level of their business.
Action: Invest in a Preference Management Platform where you can collect customer preferences directly and use that data to deliver truly personalized experiences, increasing engagement and interaction, therefore boosting business metrics.
2. Build trust with your customers
Privacy must be interwoven into everything you do, rather than being seen as an add-on. It must be part of your marketing activity, and it has to be part of your product development. If you build privacy into your product, your product is more valuable. Don’t see it as a cost, see it as a benefit. Your ability to generate trust and generate consent from your users will be directly linked to your ability to generate revenue. Therefore, consent rate should become a key KPI to follow.
Action: Rework your privacy policies for 100% clarity and invest in better legal explainers.
3. Take time to understand the data you are currently collecting
Rather than frantically collecting massive amounts of data and then trying to make sense of it using AI or other technologies, try to understand where exactly you provide value to your customers by using their data, and focusing on this.
Start investing in UX and transparency. If users know their data is being collected to provide them with a more optimized experience, they are much more likely to consent. Customer experience is a crucial differentiator, and a major factor in customer experience is trust.
Action: Focus on data quality, not data quantity. This is the biggest adjustment in mindset that the industry will be forced to adopt.
A reliance on cookies and third-party data will have to stop. Change is always scary. But that’s ok. In fact, while it may take a period of harsh adjustment, in the long run this is definitely a good thing. A cookieless world does not mark the end of data collection, but rather a new beginning. A new beginning in which privacy is made positive.
Find the full agenda and register here.