Tech Companies Respond to Privacy Needs

Tech companies around the world are responding to increased privacy needs.

I've been seeing an interesting trend in the past few weeks about how most of the big tech companies are responding to the increasing demands, particularly from the EU, for better controls, privacy and transparency. It looks like the wild west of the internet is slowly being tamed.

The theme over the digital search ecosystem seems to be how companies respond to the increased demands for privacy and transparency from governments and consumers. It does seem that businesses are responding and changing as a result. Quick summary over the past month:

• Meta, Facebook's parent company, is developing privacy-friendly ad options with quite simplistic metrics to report on, e.g. views and engagement.
• Firefox is rolling out Total Cookie Protection by default which will likely stop any form of remarketing advertising while you're using this browser.
• Microsoft joins Google Ads, and Facebook is rolling out advertiser identity verification to try and tighten up who can use their advertising services.
• Tech giants agree to share more information with the European Commission as the EU update their Code of Practice on Disinformation Act. (Do they have much choice?) They have agreed to provide country-specific data to better track parties spreading disinformation within individual countries. They've also agreed to disclose how they remove or limit harmful content and work closely with third-party fact-checkers.

What does this mean? I've written about how the internet is still an evolving entity. When I first started search marketing, it really was anything goes. But as legislation, education and understanding of the internet and specifically these digital platforms catch up, I think we're seeing the structure, process and compliance put in place to regulate (as much as possible) the potential for harm or abuse through the major platforms.

How's it impact us? It's likely that despite our best efforts and the agony of installing GA4, our data available as advertisers will likely decrease and will see an increased reliance on models, forecasting and approximation.
I've had related conversions with many of you about this already. I think the tough one is more for the B2B marketers or large consumer purchase market because the conversion time there is much longer.

But marketing/advertising has been around for a while; I think with clear communication about the business, and how it's performing over time, we can still get a reasonable idea of what's working and what's not.

Wait, one exception, remarketing or lookalike audience tactics will likely decrease a lot in effectiveness as those initiatives above come into play.