The changes to Apple's privacy policy last year were one of those events where the worried predictions turned out to be precisely the opposite of what happened – specifically, marketers will have a significant reduction in their ability to target and personalize ads based upon their online behavior, which will have a downstream impact on the social media giants' ad revenues.
As a result of these factors, the money that Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) continue to spend on marketing is becoming less and less effective.
ROI has plunged by nearly 40% by some measures based on the data available. Marketing professionals are scrambling to keep up with the new environment. As of yet, it has not made a notable difference in the manner in which they behave.
The marketing community still thinks that we live in an advertising world in which a vast amount of data has been made available. The majority had not yet adopted a policy that they believed would be most beneficial for them. In a post-privacy era, in which marketers are given less and less information about individuals or their digital consumption across a broad range of devices and platforms, marketers must engage with their customers as soon as they show an interest in their products.
Value exchange
A person cannot be assumed to be an ideal demographic candidate for your product simply by reaching them, especially if your product requires a great deal of consideration.
It is still imperative to have some exchange of value where marketers give something to customers that they need - something that is more often just more information - as a way to gain their attention and hopefully gain their loyalty in the future.
It would be impossible to exist in mattress stores or any physical retail store if these requirements were not necessary. There is no doubt that consumers tend to stick with what they know and love, even when it comes to transactions and that is why it is now up to digital marketers to re-create the three-dimensional relationships that still exist in life instead of just online transactions.
Several aspects of Apple's reformed privacy policy make it apparent that marketers have become far too lazy in many ways. As a result, they had become accustomed to an environment where they could observe signals that would enable them to predict future shopping behavior for every customer they encountered.
It is crucial to understand that the absence of this world does not mean brands are doomed to fail. To put it simply, it means that they need to come up with original and creative ways of accomplishing their goals, which may even require them to re-learn some old lessons they may have forgotten over the years.
