• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 6 hours ago

The European marketing world is facing a new regulatory gambit that could limit the use of email pixels. 

The Garante, the Italian Data Protection Authority, says marketers and businesses of any type have six months to comply with new rules, according to a post by A&O Sherman, the global law firm. 

The new regulation casts a wide net.

“The provision highlights that tracking pixels are used in virtually all cases by email marketing platforms—for purposes ranging from verifying the correct receipt of messages to combating spam, from audience measurement to the personalization of communications, and even the identification of phishing activities. Their use applies equally to commercial and promotional communications as well as to service or institutional communications.”

But wait—the new rule is not that bad. It basically requires transparency. 

“The Garante strongly affirms that the use of tracking pixels is lawful only on the condition that the recipient is informed in advance, regardless of the purpose of the communication or the type of sender. A breach of this obligation constitutes a violation of the principle of fairness referred to in Article 5(1(a) of the GDPR." 

Who can be against that?

Moreover, there are instances where the advance notice requirement does not apply:

• When the sender uses standardized pixels to perform an anonymized statistical count of the open rate. 
• When they are the context of security measures related to the user authentication process—i.e.,  account activation confirmation or password change management.  
• When pixels are used in institutional or service messages that the data controller is legally obliged to send. These would include mandatory banking communications, security incident notifications, and institutional information campaigns.

The bad news for brands is that consent is required for uses such as marketing and profiling.

Now this is only one country, but it signals a potential shift in the regulatory environment, and it clearly pertains to senders when they are located in Italy or elsewhere. The full A&O Sherman article can be found here.