#TwitterChat: How to personalise brand message amid growing data privacy concerns?

The accelerated transition to digital has also created challenges regarding keeping consumer data safe. Even as consumers seek a seamless experience on digital, brands are increasingly looking at ways to create personalised experiences for consumers, based on their online behaviour, preferences and searches.

Mobile is one such platform where brands can reach out to the consumer directly. Mobile ad spends have increased by 5% in 2020, constituting 59.8% of the total digital ad spends, while mobile reach is expected to climb to 820 million by 2022 (KPMG report).

Also read:  #TwitterChat: Data privacy in the era of increased personalisation

To understand the tastes, preferences and behaviour of consumers, collecting data becomes extremely important and mobile is one such device which enables this. However, while this definitely enhances the user experience, lately questions have been raised on privacy of the data collected. User profiles contain information that can be used in a negative way once in wrong hands. We have seen illegal practices take place with data theft such as in the case of Cambridge Analytica.

With the rapid digital transition, there are growing concerns regarding safety of data. To address these concerns as well as to explore ways to keep data secure, Adgully’s marquee #TwitterChat property turned the spotlight on ‘Personalised Messaging and Data Privacy’ this week.

Joining in the discussion were:

Sujoy Golan, Chief of Marketing & Omnichannel Platform, Affle

Mihir Pathare, Associate Director at Fractal Ink - Linked by Isobar

Vineet Kumar, Social Entrepreneur, Founder and President of CyberPeace Foundation

The conversation began by the panelists being asked to share their insights on the way apps and websites collect information and data of consumers. 

https://twitter.com/adgully/status/1332255750605873152?s=19

According to Golan, “It is important to differentiate between websites (who use your browsing behaviour and possibly location data) and apps (which can have far deeper access to all the data that sits on your device).”

Kumar added here, “Often times in the development process, data collection is not paid attention to, especially in cases where countries don’t have data protection laws and overarching policies. Developers and app and website owners then collect direct data points from the user through input fields, behaviour and activity on their platform, etc. They also tend to use other data points like cookies that user are generating continuously that gives these services access to other activities of the user.”

“On smartphones, this can be even more pervasive through real time data collection like location and other sensor data,” he added.

Pathare elaborated, “Your age, interests, purchasing habits, frequented locations, health, and social map are all valuable pieces of information that most apps and websites collect. Hardware IDs, IP addresses, geo location, cell site data, other apps on your phone, the other cookies in your system, the time you access a website… every bit of meta data can paint a picture of individual consumer.”

Adding further, he said, “Guardrails exist to prevent misuse and unauthorised access to private data, but the overwhelming volume of data that is potentially accessible to an app or website makes it difficult for the average person to keep track of where their data winds up.”

The conversation then moves on to enquiring as to how can users and marketers be involved in data privacy measures. 

https://twitter.com/adgully/status/1332258151849070592?s=19

According to Pathare, “Our strategies should evolve to focus not on mining and using customers’ data, but on building models of their behaviour across all channels and touchpoints – to truly personalise their experience using deep learning technologies and adaptive designs. There are plenty of resources about marketing that can speak about standard operating procedures better than I can. As a business, SOPs have to be grounded in principles of bringing benefits to users and communicating this to them.”

“Use measures such as privacy moats to ensure sensitive data does not flow out of the intended purpose (for example, the TouchID fingerprint data is all processed on device on iPhones),” he added.

Giving his perspective, Kumar said, “In order to process data, consent is only one of the parameters and companies often forget that. In some cases, companies can legitimately process data but in the absence of consent they tend not to. However, where consent is necessary, it should be unambiguous, direct and specific as to the things that the data will be processed for. When it comes to security and privacy, there are industry and government standards. Mostly, industry standards are at par or better than government which should be followed.”

He explained, “Generally, the principles of privacy by design, regular audit and monitoring of security controls, etc., should be done. There is need to set up accountability controls (internal and external). Internally, process workflow management for all data related activities should be done to ensure that each team that works on a project is accountable for the work that they do on the data. To this effect, tokenisation can be implemented to data movement properly. For external accountability, mostly vendor management is the pain point due to several instances in the past where vendor security systems are flawed or inefficient. Therefore, companies must invest in appropriate policies for vendor outsourcing and management which sets out clear contractual and other responsibilities.”

Golan summed up the round of answers by noting, “Published policy and transparency is key:

  • What permissions are you asking the user for on the app?
  • What do each of these mean?
  • What data are 3rd party trackers collecting on your own website/app? Have you checked, audited & okayed?”

Catch the complete conversation on our Twitter page and follow @adgully for such discussions every Friday between 3 pm and 4 pm.

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