Data ethics in a first-party data-centric world

Much has been written about the demise of third party data, and many marketers are now shifting gears and building a marketing strategy that relies on first party data.

Speaking at the recent APAC HUAWEI Ads Summit 2022, Chris Packman, GroupM Nexus’s head of audience strategy APAC, shared that while much has been made of the headline-grabbing news around the demise of the cookie, cookies have not traditionally been the best way to truly understand consumers.

“While cookies have been really useful for tracking, they aren’t all that great as they don’t provide advertisers all of the crucial information they could be using,” he said.

According to Packman, many of the conversations media agencies are now having have been around the collection of first party data in a privacy compliant way.

He said that to really get the information which is truly valuable to brands, marketers must embrace the value exchange economy and go beyond transactions, and that’s not always the easiest thing to do. Moreover, today, companies also need to ensure that ethics are at the heart of any data collection to win over the trust of the sceptical consumer.

“We must understand that just because we have a piece of data doesn’t mean that we should necessarily use that data,” he said. This is especially true on data collected around sensitivities such as health and wellness.

“Marketers must then make sure there’s the right balance in place to ensure that privacy is paramount. If you step over that mark, then it’ll be a heavy fine,” he said.

Adding to the conversation, Malcolm Wong, Huawei’s vice-president, APAC ads product, also shared that for a company such as Huawei, data and user privacy have been of the utmost importance. In fact, HUAWEI Ads is currently a listed Consent Management Platform (CMP) with IAB Europe as of March 2022, which further recognises its active engagement in the standardisation for the digital advertising ecosystem.

As early as 2020, HUAWEI Ads was also registered as a global vendor with the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework, and the recent recognition as a listed CMP further aligns with HUAWEI Ads’ vision to enhancing ad services compliances, while boosting operating efficiency and promoting healthy development of the advertising industry.

“Our commitment to our users’ privacy is of utmost importance. That defines the boundary, because we do have sensitive first party data from consumers given our range of products from wearables to smart home devices. While we ensure that our users’ privacy preferences are met, our usage of consented 1^st party data is according to IAB’s programmatic guidelines, especially the audience taxonomy,” Wong said.

Shaping marketing in a data-first world

Wong added that Huawei has always had a massive amount of mobile users, so when it comes to ad traffic, it has always had mobile ID solutions, OAID, in place for its marketers. This enables advertisers and brands to shape their first party data marketing strategy to better reach and engage with Huawei’s device and app users.

What the demise of the cookie has done, added Wong, is shift the conversation of targeting users towards contextual marketing which will be of increasing importance in today’s world.

Moreover, he shared that relying on Huawei’s mobile ecosystem, currently Huawei’s ad marketplace interacts with its devices’ algorithms and architecture, allows advertisers to reach more than 730 million global Huawei device users across smartphones, PCs and tablets. Its native apps, and more than 36,000 third-party publisher partners, also amplifies advertisers’ businesses, products, and services from multi-digital app touch-points.

This allows brands such as Nestia, which is a one-stop platform dedicated to daily living in Singapore, to effectively reach its target audience, said Cheryl Wang, Nestia’s chief marketing officer. Nonetheless, having first party data is still a core aspect of its business, she added.

She also said, like many marketers, Nestia is now putting more focus into full funnel tracking, mapping touch-points, better understanding the target audience, and tailoring content. All in all, the brand is now working to also better understand and determine which channels and types of content are truly working for its communities.

“For us, I think the importance of optimising the content for the right touch-point and target audience in the right part of the channel will be a focus for us,” she said.

“We also have to experiment with a broader mix of their marketing channels in order to capture the right target audience while we carry on trying to collect as much first party data as we can.”

Creativity still paramount in the data world

While much of the conversations media agencies today are having may be geared towards first party data collection, at the end of the day, the emotional connection is of equal importance. Emotional loyalty is one which is built over time, but also requires the brand to come back to the basics – which are anchored around creativity, said panellists.

Vaibhav Chopra, ADA’s Singapore head of marketing services, shared that to truly stand out, marketers must marry audience insight to creativity. By playing with the data of what the consumer has shared with consent, marketers can optimise the true power of media and creative.

“At the end of the day, media & creative must work together. Media helps deliver the ad to the customers at the right place & the right time. Whereas ultimately, it is the content that has to do the talking, and connect with the consumer,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Packman shared that marketers must ensure that there is a clear creative strategy, one which aligns with the way in which they want to collect data; and the way in which they want to communicate with consumers, that is, a long-term solution rather than a short-term transactional one.

“Marketers have to have creative excellence and unique ways in which they put their adverts out. With everyone else also doing the same, marketers are already facing a certain level of ad blindness along with numerous platforms on which an ad can be delivered,” he said.

He added that the long-term goal of acquiring data needs to be based around ensuring the consumer experience can be as great as possible.

HUAWEI Ads will be organising a series of ad summits in Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand in collaboration with the industry experts. Advertisers who wish to gain first-hand insights and knowledges, or would like to learn more about HUAWEI Ads services can register their interests at huaweiadsapac@huawei.com.

For more information about HUAWEI Ads, please visit: https://ads.huawei.com