At a time when privacy has become a hot topic in the digital advertising paradigm, tech giant Meta has partnered with Deloitte to release a report on the state of data privacy rights.
Published as “A Marketer’s Guide to Privacy-Enhancing Technologies“, it explores the application of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) in advertising and marketing.
Meta has advised marketers to be aware of how their business collects and processes data. This domain is likely to witness massive transformations with the introduction of new rules aimed at enhanced privacy protection.
However, the changes will also open up new opportunities that might make marketing significantly easier in the future.
What Are PETs and What Does the Report Say About Them?
Privacy-enhancing technologies, or PETs, refer to a range of technologies and techniques used to protect data and create the foundation for privacy-enabled ad personalization and measurement.
Industry collaborations and proposals led by consortiums have been trying to find solutions capable of delivering private cross-platform, measurement, and customer matching between advertisers and publishers.
PETs allow businesses to increase customer data protection without creating friction.Delloit and Meta report
With PETs, businesses could build always-on privacy-preserving solutions and enable key marketing use cases simultaneously. It also went on to add that PETs alone will not be enough for privacy protection – good data governance is just as important. However, it still highlighted that every marketer must include these technologies in their privacy-first marketing strategies.
Though the PET-based solutions that will enable a privacy-first digital advertising ecosystem are still in a stage of infancy, the report pointed out that they have been giving rise to various trends.
In the report, Deloitte not only explored privacy-enhancing technologies in detail but also shared some immediate steps that would help marketers prepare for the future of digital advertising. These include educating and building awareness, making data collaborative alongside the business, enhancing privacy capabilities and frameworks, and more.
The report also listed key privacy-enhancing technologies and techniques currently being explored, along with detailed overviews of how they work, how they could be used, and how they protect privacy.
The list comprises three techniques – differential privacy, K-anonymity, and homomorphic encryption and as many technologies – multi-party computation, federated analytics, and trusted execution environments.
Other additional PETs highlighted in the report include federated learning, zero-knowledge proofs, synthetic data, purpose limitation, consented first-party data, time-delayed reporting, pseudonymization, and data minimization.
“We believe that privacy-enhancing technologies will support the next generation of digital advertising”, Meta wrote in its blog post. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency protocol and the deprecation of third-party cookies have caused Meta serious problems.
The digital advertising ecosystem has relied on third-party cookies for a long time. However, with the new privacy concerns and demands taken into account, they are being replayed by privacy-enhancing technologies.
Considering the tech giant’s falling stock prices, it’s no surprise that Meta is adapting to the seismic shifts in the marketing industry and adopting new privacy practices. It remains to be seen how well Meta will incorporate PETs on its platforms and how it will work out in the end.
