Global brands are gearing up for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR), which will go into effect in May and change how brands collect and store data.
Chiefly, the new rules limit the amount of data that marketers can collect on European consumers, who have more options about what data companies can see about them. Marketers and vendors who have long relied on data-driven advertising will now need to implement new processes and technology that ask consumers to share their information.
With data privacy top of mind, Adweek polled a handful of execs—including Google’s CMO and the president of UM—at CES about what the upcoming regulations mean for marketers.
Kasha Cacy, CEO, UM for the U.S.
We are going to have to put in rules, regulations and processes because we will end up with data from Europe. Although it isn’t applicable in the U.S., we need to make sure we know how to handle that, so there are some practical considerations that we’re working on.
Then I think there are some proactive things we’re working on, which is how do we think about data privacy, how do we lead the industry in that area?
It’s interesting because data privacy in the U.S. is a conversation that’s been going on six, eight, 10 years and it doesn’t catch fire the way that it does [in Europe]. I don’t see those same regulations happening here anytime soon because you don’t see the uproar happening here. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t as companies and agencies think very clearly about how we use that data and are we being respectful because if we abuse it, it will be gone.
