Q&A With Walton Isaacson's Albert Thompson

Albert Thompson, managing director of digital at Walton Isaacson, will take part in a panel discussion on the Media+Data+Privacy Equation at our Forecast2020 conference Jan. 29 in New York. We caught up with him earlier this week.

Q: What is the most important idea you hope attendees will take away from your input at the conference?

A: Consumer identity has always sat at the core for any Consumer Marketing. Whether we're talking Device ID or universal ID, the continuous refinement in audience profiling that involves cross referencing purchase data + physical location data + online behavioral tracking data + social participating data is the "North Star" we should all be tracking towards. To me, this is the new audience-targeting formula.  

We as an agency are doubling down on the ID management model for consumer targeting.  We've always focused on device ID targeting and/or device ID as a way to initiate the match to a consumer.  

Q: What's next on your personal or professional agenda?

A: I want to gain a greater understanding of how Blockchain can offer the necessary privacy and security innovations to identity management.

Q: Which consumer privacy challenge keeps you up at night?

A: The notion that the consumer will continue to push for greater control of their identity, thus greater degrees of separation from agents that would exploit or misuse this information, while the modern-era marketer will require more intimate consumer details to ensure acquisition, retention, and loyalty. This is compounded by the fact that ad-tech companies are sitting at the intersection of this issue with a "platform first" disposition instead of a human-centered, "consumer first" POV.

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