In this exclusive byline, Kristina Prokop, co-founder of Eyeota, a Dun & Bradstreet company, breaks down how shifting privacy regulations will impact the existing global audience data landscape and what key factors marketers can assess now to forge sustainable partnerships in the privacy-first era.

The global regulatory trend toward enhancing consumer data privacy and protection is just getting started. For marketers, the forthcoming changes don’t represent an end to consumer targeting and personalisation, but they will represent a reinvention of how that targeting and personalisation are accomplished. 

Global privacy shifts are going to fundamentally change how consumer data is acquired and authorised. Across the board, there will be a push to keep data closer to the entity that secured the original permission to use it, and that’s as it should be. From a marketer’s standpoint, however, that’s going to mean changes within their data partnerships. Let’s take a look at what brands and agencies should expect.

Shifting regulations, shifting data assets

As more privacy regulations take effect, we’re going to see a deprecation in the quality of many global audience data sets, particularly among data providers that don't have direct access to the assets that support them. For marketers, the shifting availability might come as a surprise, as many don’t realise how much audience data in the current ecosystem is being aggregated versus acquired directly. For the most part, this sharing and aggregation is being done in compliance with current regulations, but forthcoming legislation and changes will remove many of the mechanisms that permit such movement of audience data among providers. 

Third-party data providers will continue to play an essential role within the marketing and advertising space, particularly as it relates to enhancing audience understanding within brands’ first-party assets and extending that understanding for effective prospecting. However, the future will belong to the third-party providers with high-quality permissioned data sets, versus those that have solely focused on high-quality accredited data from data suppliers. 

The good news for marketers is that, thanks to these forthcoming privacy shifts, the global audience data marketplace is about to become a lot less commoditised. As third-party audience data sets are increasingly owned and operated by the providers that acquired the data, the result will be high-quality audiences that are unique to the data partner and their clients.

Screening data partners in a privacy-first marketplace

As the privacy landscape shifts, so will the third-party data provider landscape. So how should marketers be screening for sustainable partnerships going forward? Here are a few areas to evaluate: 

Proximity to quality data: Many marketers today aren’t in the habit of discussing the providence of data with their partners, but this will be an increasingly important area of inquiry going forward. How close is the partner to its data, and what permissions has it secured to use that data for third-party marketing purposes? Will those permissions hold up in the future privacy landscape? Likewise, it’s important to invest in quality, and one way to do that is to look for certified audience data that’s been put to the test.  

Interoperability: Just because data needs to stay closer to its source in the privacy landscape of the future doesn’t mean marketers shouldn’t be able to leverage their data investments across platforms, channels, and devices. As once-relied-upon identifiers disappear from the landscape, marketers must prioritise data partners that offer flexible, interoperable solutions that allow them to operate in an ID-agnostic capacity. Marketers need to seek out data sources that will be available to them across major platforms, including DSPs, DMPs, CDPs, social platforms and more.  

Global B2C and B2B understanding: Marketers today need a multi-faceted view of their consumers, regardless of the industry in which they operate. For that reason, it’s vital that data partners be able to translate consumer attributes to business audiences, and vice versa – and at a global level.

As more-robust privacy regulations go into effect around the globe, marketers need to get closer to their target audiences – and that means getting closer to their third-party data providers. By working with companies that can attest to the providence of their data and offer quality, cross-vertical audience insights at a global scale, marketers can ensure that their data investments will remain secure in a privacy-first world.