Privacy in 2024: Navigating the new landscape for marketers

Privacy trends will continue to evolve in 2024, influenced by privacy regulation changes, technology improvements, and users’ demands for more transparency in the handling of their personal data. In this time of upheaval, staying ahead of the curve and being able to quickly find solutions to emerging changes is key to survival. 

Marketers are constantly wondering how to maintain effective marketing strategies in the face of increasingly stringent privacy regulations. To help you adapt to the ever-changing privacy trends and incorporate them into your marketing strategy, Airbridge has compiled the latest information that marketers need to know now. 

Policy shift: Europe’s Digital Markets Act following GDPR

On the heels of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which marked the beginning of the privacy movement, new regulatory measures have been announced to ensure users’ fundamental rights online and create a fair and open digital economy. The Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to regulate the power and influence of large digital platforms, designates six companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – as gatekeepers, meaning that they will act as intermediaries between users and sellers. It mainly deals with regulating big tech companies and maintaining fair competition conditions. At the same time, there are also many privacy-related regulations, such as prohibiting the reuse of users’ personal information and requiring explicit consent before tracking users for advertising purposes, so various changes in the industry are expected. 

Changes in platforms: How the digital industry responds to the privacy-first era 

The Digital Markets Act

In response to the Digital Markets Act, Alphabet will introduce a banner asking for consent to share data across Google products. While users’ personal data was shared across Google products for personalized advertising among other purposes, the DMA will require explicit user consent.

Apple has also announced that it will introduce new alternatives to prevent privacy and security threats to users, including notarization for iOS apps, authentication for Marketplace developers, and alternative payments. These safeguards have taken effect in March 2024, when users can download iOS 17.4 and later versions.

Google Privacy Sandbox

In an effort to provide users with a safer online experience, Google is planning to deprecate support for third-party cookies and Google Advertising IDs (GAIDs) used to track ad performance. Third-party cookies are scheduled to be deprecated at the end of 2024, and the exact date of GAID deprecation has not yet been announced. With the loss of data that was traditionally used to measure web and app ad performance, it’s time to start thinking about other ways to measure ad performance.Fortunately, Google offers a new framework called the “Privacy Sandbox” to help marketers continue to improve their marketing performance while protecting privacy. The Privacy Sandbox introduces three APIs as replacements for third-party cookies and GAIDs, segmented into two main areas: web and apps (Android). Topics API to help acquire new users based on their recent interest-based history within a browser or app, the Protected Audience API to enable ongoing remarketing using custom audiences, and the Attribution Reporting API to measure ad performance. Google and the industry are actively testing to make the changes more stable. Airbridge, as an MMP, is also responding to the new changes in the Google Privacy Sandbox. You can learn more in our blog post here.

Apple’s SKAdNetwork and the Privacy Manifest

Apple introduced the App Tracking Transparency policy with the iOS 14.5 update, which mandated the opt-in collection of Identity for Advertisers (IDFA) upon app installation. With IDFA collection limited, Apple introduced SKAdNetwork (SKAN) as a new framework for measuring app marketing campaign performance while respecting privacy. 

Apple also recently announced that starting in the spring of 2024, apps published on the App Store that use third-party SDKs or APIs will be required to submit a privacy manifest for the SDKs. The privacy manifest is a file that summarizes in one standardized format how the first and third-party code handles personal data in the app. In the file, developers must specify what categories of data the app or third-party SDK collects about app users and why they collect it. Apple says that clearly sharing this information will help prevent indiscriminate data collection and better protect users’ privacy. By helping developers understand the data collection and use cases of their SDKs, these updates will help create a safer online marketplace.

How MMPs address privacy movement

MMPs, including Airbridge, are adapting to these evolving privacy trends.

How MMP helps 1. Responses to the Digital Marketplace Act

Airbridge rolls out SDK and API updates to advertisers in response to Google’s policy changes under the Digital Marketplace Act. These updates enable you to prompt EEA (European Economic Area) users within your app for their consent to use their information and pass it on to Google.

How MMP helps 2. Changes in advertising platform alternatives

Furthermore, MMP continues to collaborate with each of our advertising channels to keep them informed about the updates from the Google Privacy Sandbox and Apple’s SKAN.

Regarding SKAN, many advertisers face challenges adapting to its new data processing requirements, as they differ significantly from previous models used for ad performance measurement. Airbridge has developed a dashboard that simplifies the configuration of SKAN 3.0 and 4.0 metrics, providing detailed explanations and guidance on setting conversion values to assist marketers. We also provide an “Attribution Overlap” feature to identify any double-counting installs and ensure accurate ad performance assessment. With this data from Android and iOS (including SKAN) consolidated in one Airbridge report, you gain a comprehensive view of your overall marketing performance at a glance, enhancing visibility into your marketing effectiveness. 

While predicting the future of privacy is challenging, being informed about the changes can help you tailor your marketing strategy. If you’re interested in learning more about effectively addressing privacy to meet your business goals, contact Airbridge’s marketing experts.

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