Media, Search & Analytics
What you need to do now to be ready for GDPR
February 10th 2018
Next May, GDPR, or the EU General Data Protection Regulation will be in effect, and as a programmatic marketer and someone who embraces the data-driven side of media targeting, it scares me.
The GDPR was created to address consumers’ concerns about their data and how it’s leveraged, including strict new rules around individual data, including customer consent and their right to erasure in the version of the GDPR adopted by the European Parliament. Article 17 provides that the data subject has the right to request erasure of personal data related to them on any one of a number of grounds.
By next May, everyone with customer data will need to be compliant, not just marketers in the EU, but to all foreign companies processing data of EU residents. It provides for a harmonization of the data protection regulations throughout the EU, thereby making it easier for non-European companies to comply with these regulations. GDPR will be unforgiving to those who fail to comply; organizations will face fines of 20 million euros ($24 million) or 4 percent of annual global turnover, whichever is greater.
You can see the risk GDPR poses to programmatic advertising, as it’s successful and highly reliant in large part due to its ability to target the right consumers at the right time and place. Whether it is declared data, such as data in Facebook, or probabilistic and modelled data such as data collected by third party, or location-based data, we’re targeting our ads very precisely to a set of consumers. The problem lies in that the majority of consumers don’t know if we are practicing above board privacy compliance or not. They just know that they are suddenly seeing very relevant ads.
Will GDRP cause consumers to opt-out of being targeted? Will it be a bigger risk than the 30 percent continued year-over-year growth of ad-blocker adoption? While we wait for May, there are steps that brands and agencies can take now, to ensure they’re compliant.
Click here to read about the steps you can take to ensure your brand is GDPR compliant.
