It seems like every day a new bombshell goes off in the world of online privacy. Yesterday, Microsoft announced it would be including a new Privacy Tracking Protection Feature in its release of Internet Explorer 9 enabling users to limit third parties from from tracking their web behavior. Given IE’s leading market share and the likelihood that other browsers will incorporate similar feature enhancements, this development will have a significant impact on the online data ecosystem. That said, it’s important for all of the major constituents of this ecosystem – web publishers, other types of content providers, consumers, marketers, agencies and other technology and service providers – to keep in mind a few key themes:
You Can’t Put The Data Genie Back In The Bottle – We live in a data-driven world. As a result of the digital technology revolution, we are all constantly producing data, and this data is being captured and catalogued in one form or another. As technology further transforms all of our daily experiences and networks these experiences together, the production and use of digitized data will continue to increase, not decrease. In this context, it makes good sense for consumer technology providers, such as browser makers, to provide options that enable consumers to better regulate and manage how their activities produce and share this data. But none of these changes or developments is going to reverse the increasing production of consumer data, and the use of this data, where appropriate, for content, marketing and other commercial purposes.
It’s About The Consumer, Stupid – At Lotame, we are in the consumer choice business. We enable our partners to aggregate, organize, interpret and activate unstructured consumer data in order to provide their customers with more relevant choices when it comes to content, advertising and marketing offers. Regardless of the online privacy frameworks in place, we will evolve our technology and services (consistent with these privacy frameworks) to best achieve this goal. At the same time, for consumers making choices about use of their data, and the advocates working on their behalf, we will continue to strive to earn their trust – through transparency and sound practices with respect to what data we collect and how we use it.
In The Land Of The Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is King – We’re not naive about the fact that, even with the overall growth of available data sources and the opportunities to earn the trust of consumers, web publishers and marketers relative to how we collect and use data, the advent of new tools such as IE9′s Privacy Tracking Protection feature will constrain the data which companies like Lotame can use in order to serve our customers. However, these data constraints will only increase the needs of marketers and web publishers to interpret, understand and act on the data to which they do have access. We are a leader in solving this problem – using our years of experience delivering highly targeted and effective online advertising campaigns for our brand clients and their agencies, and our best-in-class data management platform for publishers who want to make the most of their first party data and whatever third party data sources are available to them. We are fully committed to maintaining and building on this leadership position – adding the most intelligence to available data sources so that our clients can be successful, all the while respecting whatever limits consumers place on collection and use of their data through the growing array of privacy management tools.
- Adam Lehman, Chief Operating Officer, Lotame
