• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 29, 2024

Building a future with first-party data with guardrails means advertisers must build ways to provide consent from consumers, but also discover a method to keep their brands safe from outside influences.

Companies are taking various paths to accomplish both of these goals, and are at different points in the process.

Google has rolled out two features to help navigate the evolving digital privacy landscape and strengthen first-party data strategies, looking at alternatives to support advertisers wanting to improve privacy protection for consumers.

Tag Diagnostics and an integrated consent management (CMP) platform are intended to streamline first-party data collection and use.

The Tag Diagnostics enables marketers to view the health of an account, alert to potential measurement issues, and offer guidance on fixing any issues that arise.

The CMP improves the creation of a consent banner and the way it’s implemented. It works in Google Ads, Analytics, and Tag Manager interfaces, and Integrates with several CMP partners such as Cookiebot, iubenda, and Usercentrics.

Tinuiti recently partnered with InfoTrust lets brands operate from privacy-by-default approach for reporting, measuring, and activating first-party data. 

Simon Poulton, executive vice president of innovation at Tinuiti, said the partnership with InfoTrust came down to supporting what clients want for the future of data portability. The “Privacy-By-Default” approach focused on reporting, measurement, activation first-party data for brands.

“As a patchwork of regional privacy laws come into effect, we are seeing more need from brands,” Poulton said. “There are some lawsuits pertaining to health organizations. These are getting conversations started.”

When asked whether these types of consumer protections are led by any political administration affiliation, Poulton said the timeline has become a little blurry, but it pretty much began in the United States with the California Consumer Privacy Act.

California Governor Jerry Brown in June 2018 during his second term in office signed the law, which took effect in January 2020. The U.S. President at the time was Donald Trump, according to Google.

Poulton said handing hashed email addresses to advertising platforms have become a concern for advertisers when thinking about the “chain of custody of the data. There is a balance between privacy in terms of consent-based signal sharing, but it’s not constrained to hashed emails, but also IP addresses. The second component is the secured transition of the data.”

Coming back to Google’s news, “the only way you can ensure privacy is consent,” Poulton said.