How advertisers are navigating data privacy and tracking changes

In early 2021, Apple announced new data privacy and tracking changes within the iOS 14 release, making it clear that an advertiser’s wider marketing ecosystem is more important than ever. Tracking and attribution changes created immediate changes to advertisers’ day-to-day activities, directly influencing KPIs and campaign metrics. Most notably, advertising data has become more:

• Restricted — Due to the rollout of Apple’s iOS 14, advertisers no longer have the ability to identify or track users who have opted out of app tracking, resulting in weaker audience targeting options and a decrease in tracked ROI.
• Aggregated — Event tracking and reporting have become more generic, affecting marketer decision making and optimization across audience and campaign
• Delayed — Frequency of conversion data can take up to 24-48 hours in cases, delaying optimization and affecting ROI.

Despite this, many Sprinklr customers have taken the opportunity to address some more structural elements on how they manage and use data across the organization. When media data becomes scarce, consolidating insights around the customer and across all customer-facing functions has been a critical step in reconciling losses in performance KPIs.

Data privacy advertising strategies

Several new strategies have emerged from this shift to consumer privacy:

• Applying insights collected from customer service teams on how ads are being received
• Automating campaign triggers based on a diverse set of signals and data sources
• Leveraging first-party data sources to more accurately target customers

Many Sprinklr customers are finding new, exciting ways of delivering the same if not greater output from their marketing investments. Some customer examples include:

Retail organizations

After an increase in revenue targets from digital advertising in 2020, the paid media team at a global cosmetics brand sought out additional ways to achieve their KPIs. Part of the original strategy included a focus on pixel-based retargeting and look-alike audiences, both of which were affected by the iOS 14.5 update. Instead, through their existing Sprinklr care ecosystem, the brand was able to launch an entirely new commerce strategy that directed consumers to initiate private messages for beauty consultations and product discovery. This allowed their customer services team, including sales consultants, to manage and convert inbound traffic from paid social media while collecting valuable insight on preferences and buying signals.

Telecommunications

Becoming less reliant on immediate campaign and pixel-based data can be challenging. Many advertisers have sought alternative signals to determine a campaign optimization, as was the case with one of the UK’s largest telecom providers. Using Sprinklr’s Smart Rules, their agency developed a campaign that would enable fans to use social media as their second screen for real-time reactions at key sponsored rugby matches. This solution gives advertisers the ability to activate campaigns, creatives, and optimizations generated from social listening data. As a result, the advertiser evolved their marketing and advertising approach to develop custom prompts through social media channels/listening, rather than targeting using pixel-based data.

Financial services

In an effort to strengthen acquisition audiences, a major domestic bank leveraged social listening data to identify new and prospective homeowners and dynamically add them into audience segments. Rather than relying on pixel-based audiences, those eligible for their financing products received hyper-personalized messages — this enabled the bank to increase conversion across key acquisition journey stages and leverage other sources to target key audiences.

Future-proof your advertising data strategies

As we progress toward a more privacy-centric advertising model, these changes strengthen the need for brands to seek a more diverse approach in connecting with customers, data use, and measuring ROI. When advertisers leverage Sprinklr, they can easily test and evolve their strategies in a controlled environment, and decrease the impact by iOS 14 or other industry changes. The most effective accelerator for a robust digital marketing strategy is ensuring all teams have the ability to get the most out of their customer experience management (CXM) platform, while addressing governance and looking at broader opportunities to leverage data from across the organization. And as our conversations with brands migrate further into direct messaging experiences, we can expect more meaningful customer knowledge and insight into our audience’s preferences than ever before.

Design your advertising data strategy and ensure it will be useful in the future despite inevitable changes. Start with structural elements, data management practices, and closer integrations across the organization. By taking these steps today you’ll help your organization be prepared for current and upcoming data/tracking changes with minimal risk to performance.

For more information, visit Sprinklr Marketing.