• by Amina Asim , 9 hours ago

The main thing to know about first-party data is that it’s your property right.

Think about it like this: You bought a farm (maybe somewhere in Connecticut or California), and you’ve got your chickens and your cows, and you have the deed and title to that farm.

Now, someone comes to visit that farm. You, as the owner, have the right to ask them, “Hey, who are you? What’s your name, and what are you doing here?”

In the same way, if you bought a domain for a website or you’ve built an app and someone visits it, you have the right to know who they are and what they’re doing there.

As everyone is aware by now, this whole first- and third-party data business started with the GDPR in Europe and some state laws in the US, like CCPA, and recently the TDCPA in Texas, but no federal laws exist in the U.S. so far.

While personal data isn’t owned like physical property, your website or app is your digital real estate, and privacy laws respect your right to govern it as long as you follow fair disclosure and consent rules.

The most they’ll ask is that you might have to put up some signs on the farm (consent/cookie disclosure notice) to inform the visitor what they can expect there so they can make an informed decision of whether they want to visit the farm or not.

But basically, because of this essential quality of it being your property right, first-party data is the best long-term bet to build privacy-friendly advertising strategies -- and why this kind of data continues to rise in value.

For a great first-party data strategy -- apart from ensuring the right privacy-safe infrastructure and data contracts are in place to protect user data -- brands and agencies need to prioritize their data acquisition strategy.

This is something we're not talking enough about, even though it’s very important to make sure you are collecting a lot of good quality first-party data.  

This could include how you’re tracking website visits, for which tagging is a great way to go: You can tag different product pages so your data pools into the CDP in a useful, pre-segmented format; you can tag clicks, and you can even tag apps to see which features are being used the most.

In-person activations are another powerful tool to gather high-quality email addresses and consented user data (we’ve also seen great success using this data for online activation!). Simply put, if customers are filling out a whole form, they’re much more likely to convert to a purchase.

On the other hand, as we focus more on first-party data acquisition, companies or brands should also be mindful of their degree of aggressiveness. A good example of a high-friction, consumer-unfriendly data acquisition strategy is when they’re forced to download an app just to access tickets they’ve already bought -- often while standing in line at security. That feels less like service, and more like a forced trade!

Remember, every message we send to the consumer showcases our brand persona. It matters how and what data we’re asking them for. 

As clients and business partners clamor for AI and everyone rushes to build generative AI models or implement their use, the value of first-party data will skyrocket even higher. We are going to see the demand for customer first-party data and the need for data collaboration grow exponentially.

We’ve seen the demand for first-party data owned by large brands has been on the rise since last year, as they have the largest internet presence or real estate in this case.

Now it’s up to the brands and agencies to decide: How are you managing your farm?