Somebody in Australia will get sued in the near future for breaching the privacy laws that came into effect in March.
That's because marketers don't know every firm that is tagging their sites. That means bits of data about their customers are going somewhere they don't have control of. That's what gets directors sued. The current maximum fine is $1.7million for each breach.
Marketers need to get to grips with that pretty fast or face the beak.
Tagging firm Ensighten opened its Australian office this week. The company isn't positioning itself around the fear factor, more giving marketers ownership of their own data. But data which has “slipped through their fingers... and data which, oddly enough they end up buying back in the aftermarket”, says president Dan Degan.
But the fear of breaching security rules and the fluid regulatory environment is making marketers tighten up their processes.
Equally, brands are starting to ask more questions from agencies about where their money is going as programmatic trading desks grow more prevalent. They are also wising up to the technology being placed on their web properties and the implications it could have for their business.
Senior solutions specialist Mark Pybus said that he looks out for "the look of surprise on most marketers' faces when they see five or six technologies on their site that they didn't know existed." That's because "agencies and whoever else is deploying tags on their site tend to piggyback other technologies based on the back of it. I have yet to find a customer that is aware of every tag that is firing on their site. That means they don't control all of their data and that is a risk."
Equally, Pybus said that Ensighten has a role to play in keeping agencies more "honest”.
“It's driven by client demand” - the firm cites Virgin, GE Capital, Suncorp Medibank and IAG as customers - “they have spent a lot of money with media agencies, writing blank cheques based on what they provide. But now they are demanding more insight into the granular data that drives everything... and that is happening quite quickly.”
Pybus, who has spent time working for a media agency, said more and more clients were alert to the transparency issue.
“A lot of the profit [agencies are making] is borne out of the blurred lines around the data. So the big thing for us is that we empower people to actually own that data, not have their own data being rented and sitting in third party systems.”
Pybus said that the push to build out data management platforms (DMPs) “looks like the in thing to do”. The problem is, they are all doing the same thing - “building this lookalike approach to targeting, a general picture of the customer and then targeting that audience. A lot of the DMP plays that agencies are rushing into here are more about aggregating data on a very broad level.”
Pybus said that approach made sense from an agency perspective, but not always for brands.
“There's probably more money in it – the agency has a wider target and can sell more eyeballs. But it lacks the level of data I would want if it was my business. I would want to know individually what that customer is interested in so I can target them, not in a generalised way.
Ditching "marketing amnesia and continuing the story, not retelling the half I have already told you” and building up a one-to-one approach was where the market would eventually get to, he said, but the current agency model “will probably be long lived.”
Ensighten is out to challenge that in Australia. The firm has been on the acquisition trail, buying up tagging and attribution outfit TagMan and it has just raised another $40million. It could spend some of that here and is actively eyeing potential acquisitions and partnerships locally to bolster its Agile Marketing Platform.
It is also hiring people who understand both technology and marketing. Pybus said there are good people in Australia but that finding “hybrids who can cover everything, the CMO's business problems and the technical challenges... they are highly sought after.”
As some of the big tech integrators are finding in trying to sell cloud marketing solutions, “you can't just take somebody from a different market and have them binge watch Mad Men episodes,” said Degan. “There's a lot more to selling to a digital marketer than Don Draper can teach us.”
But Degan is comfortable the company will find the hybrids, just as the market will determine the “goldilocks” level of “creepiness” in terms of targeted cross-platform advertising.
“It is Darwinian. One man's creepiness is another man's relevance. The market will dictate that and the market will punish [those that don't abide]. But what my generation finds on the edge of appropriateness, my kids don't even look at. What I might see as encroachment they see as relevant. Right offer, right place in the right form. That doesn't bother them.
“But it will appropriately continue to be a topic of debate between digital marketers. The market will tell marketers what is optimal.”
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