• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, December 15, 2023

While connected and addressable TV have been making progress in addressing interoperability and other challenges, privacy issues now pose even more complex — and potentially seriously disruptive — issues.

With the COVID-accelerated boom in video streaming coinciding with intensified consumer and government scrutiny of digital media privacy practices, media owners, advertisers and ad-tech partners have been scrambling for solutions that manage to be “privacy-respectful” or “privacy-forward” while supporting and advancing the use of rich consumer data to target and measure TV advertising.

But as those in the industry know all too well, the multitude of players, operating systems (including the increasingly powerful smart TV OEMs) and apps, the bifurcation between linear and streaming models and other factors made this a daunting mission even before the emergence of a growing number of differing state privacy laws (14, at last count).

At this juncture, TV advertising “faces the same patchwork of laws and platform policies that are fundamentally changing how digital advertising works — and is arguably subject to even greater complexity,” Ashwini Karandikar, executive vice president, media, technology, and data for the 4A’s, tells Advanced TV Insider.

She cites TV-specific regulations like the Video Privacy Protection Act/VPPA (a holdover from the peak video-rental days of the ‘80s now being used as a basis for digital video privacy lawsuits); streaming’s complex distribution environment; ongoing shifts from traditional B2B models to D2C offerings; and the multiple video access points for video (smart TVs, set-top boxes, phones and game consoles).

“We expect it will take the industry some time to work through specifics at the national, state and local level,” Karandikar sums up.

In the meantime, in August, the 4A’s and the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) announced that they had commissioned ThinkMedium and Shullman Advisory to study the issues and produce a report on “Privacy and the Future of TV Advertising.”

Its scope was to include “assessing the extent to which there is a strong and practical case for collective industry action, over and above existing initiatives and individual company efforts, to address privacy-related risks and challenges facing TV measurement solutions and ATVA offerings,” as well as examining the “fast-changing landscape” and “developing practical recommendations.” 

While the process undoubtedly included discussions of the need to grapple with establishing industrywide standards, the finished report — an 86-page, free-to-download colossus released this week — doesn’t attempt to address or make recommendations about broad issues (like reaching consensus on universal adoption of one or more privacy-forward identifiers, or a truly transparent, consumer-informed opt-out process).  

On the other hand, it’s not a guide to the specifics of the various state privacy laws. Nor does it even include an update about initiatives by the 4A’s, ANA and others to push for a national privacy law that would supersede the state laws.

The finished report accurately points out that it is “impossible to embrace and optimize between existing and expanded TV opportunities without a solid understanding of where the industry is headed in terms of privacy and a robust foundation of privacy-forward practices in place. This means privacy needs to be a top business priority.”

But rather than prescribe industry solutions, it clearly states that its mission is to provide TV marketers and other industry “stakeholders” with a practical guide for integrating solid privacy policies while achieving company-specific goals.    

Some might construe this as disappointing or even a cop-out. But let's face it Working out the complex broader issues among all of the parties involved will likely take many more months (years?).

“With the rise of connected TV alongside broadcast/linear, planning, activation and measurement solutions have been iterating for a number of years, and privacy changes are only adding to the state of flux,” the report notes.

“Without a doubt, enabling privacy long-term requires active participation and collaboration from the entire TV ecosystem. But privacy changes are happening now and are already having real implications for businesses today” (report’s own italics).

In short, for the present, it seems sensible to try to help marketers and media deal responsibly with privacy mandates in ways that not only don’t hinder or obstruct their effective functioning, but might actually support growth through an approach that recognizes that “the advertising ecosystem depends on a fair value exchange between consumers and businesses.” 

Current privacy policies and practices need to be reevaluated in the context of the array of strategic and operational considerations that should go into making structural and investment decisions that will impact marketing and all other operations well into the future. 

And given that “organizations have their own ideal privacy-utility balance and unique existing business practices, capabilities, and constraints,” they need to hammer out bespoke approaches and solutions, regardless of what plays out in terms of privacy laws, stress the authors.   

However, to date, “many in the TV advertising ecosystem have viewed privacy through a compliance lens, rather than considering their risk tolerances and the privacy versus utility tradeoffs inherent in their data strategies and chosen advertising solutions,” points out CIMM Managing Director Jon Watts. 

“Although some TV stakeholders are less consumer-data-driven than their digital media counterparts, they should still understand the interplay between shifting privacy regulations and policies and resulting strategic, technical, commercial and operational changes, especially if they are seeking to employ richer consumer data,” adds Karandikar. 

The report is fairly frank about the practical conflicts and balancing acts at play. “Ideally, the advertising and media ecosystem would already fully employ strategies that protect consumer privacy and enable advertising planning and measurement use cases (utility). In reality, the privacy and utility of many existing solutions are at odds because the very practices that drive business value, such as the usage of person-level data, can inherently infringe on consumer privacy," it admits. “In order to evaluate and implement privacy-forward solutions for planning and measurement, it is helpful to consider if and how each potential solution strikes a ‘balance’ between privacy and utility.” 

For instance, in addressing the realities of trying to cope effectively right now with state-level privacy regulations, the focus is on how to assess this within the context of the array of strategic and operational considerations that should go into making structural and investment decisions that will impact marketing and all other operations well into the future.

“Unless a more complex approach is justified by revenue, strategy, or your business model, do not get distracted by the details of state-by-state legislation,” it advises. “Create an approach that meets the highest bar required for compliance and build towards that across your practices and solutions.” 

So how do companies go about all of this? Most of the report is dedicated to laying out four frameworks that are the building blocks for creating a “solutions heatmap.” 

The stakeholder framework defines the players engaged in the TV advertising industry. The use case framework establishes the measurement and activation use cases most critical for TV advertising. The privacy framework outlines what to consider when evaluating if each use case and solution and the partners that enable it are consistent and “durable” with, or at risk of running up against, existing privacy regulations and platform policies. The solutions framework identifies and classifies key solutions (tools, processes, methodologies, technologies) that enable advertising use cases. 

The heatmap then offers a way to assess the relative ease of adoption and durability of each solution, and help companies apply their own "value filters" to determine a solution’s suitability to their business needs. 

Bottom line: The management consultant jargon is a bit off-putting, and this is no beach read. But there’s no denying that the report — which included secondary research, input from experts and interviews with executives from agencies, media companies, ad-tech and measurement companies — offers a sophisticated, in-depth picture of the existing advanced TV ecosystem and an actual guide to wrapping one’s head around the complexities and making decisions.