Article: Upholding Principles of Data Privacy - Jan 2020
By Charlie Greenberg, SVP, Campaign Quality and Compliance at PatientPoint
Data is the New Oil
The phrase “data is the new oil” juxtaposes two valuable commodities and acknowledges that data is fuel for business and innovation. Taking this expression literally, there are countries with oil reserves who maximize this valuable resource and those that fail to fully develop its potential. Data can be thought of in the same way, and data privacy standards play a key role in data aggregation, sharing, sales and storage.
Upholding principles of data privacy does not handicap generating and analyzing big data. The key to doing data and privacy right is building trust with customers. This means being transparent about how data is used to construct target audiences and media publisher offerings as well as how marketers employ and repurpose audience data. With this in mind, opportunities abound for marketers to collect more data when customers appreciate that privacy standards are being adhered to and understand the intent of the commercial model from media publishers and marketers.
Just as smart media publishers and their marketers benefit from a privacy-first data approach, those who take privacy for granted will suffer consequences in the form of negative press and legislative action to impose greater regulations. While recent legislation in California and discussions in Congress about privacy rights will continue to evolve, the media publishing community can get ahead of regulations by demonstrating high data privacy standards. New launches that consider the “what ifs” in data privacy are less likely to incur customer push back and regulation.
In order for marketers to embrace new technology and targeting opportunities, media publishers must be vigilant in demonstrating that data privacy standards are upheld.