I penned a few thoughts late last year on the impact of data and privacy regulations on advertising and media. It’s an important topic and so I’m sharing a summarised version here in case you missed the original.
2024 will be no less disruptive than 2023. Efficiency and effectiveness will be the key themes, driven by consumers seeking to manage inflation as business navigates challenging times.
A key change in the ad market will be the strengthened consumer data protections, including tech company requirements to erase consumer data and the ability for consumers to sue for privacy invasions, proposed by the Attorney General’s Privacy Act Review. These protections will change the way marketers view their media strategies.
The media vendors that make up Boomtown, representing the interests of some of Australia’s biggest and smallest media vendors, while exposed to these changes via their own digital products, see merit in these protections. We also see opportunity.
Effective advertising strategies must be delivered over multiple platforms in this privacy compliant environment. 2024 is the year where it is crucially important to merge the reach and brand safety benefits of traditional media platforms with the efficiency and targeting ability of digital ad technology.
For several years the media technologists have had precedence over the budgets of the marketing department as “conversion rate optimisation” was the key performance metric. That era will move “back to the future” with the emergence of rigorous consumer data protections. Enhanced consumer data protection regulations, especially the explicit unqualified opt out rule, are driving a return to contextual advertising strategies. Local media platforms such as TV, radio, print and outdoor advertising, with their multiple platforms of delivery and extensive compliant user data, will play a bigger role in 2024.
Advertisers will demand more transparency over where their dollars are invested, not only for compliance, but to reduce waste from ad fraud. The Association of National Advertisers’ 2022 global ad fraud report identified that advertiser spend on bot-based clicks was more than $US100 billion and was set to grow further, rising to $US172 billion by 2028, according to Juniper Research. Given Australia’s digital ad market is around 2.5% of the global total, the incidence of fraudulent online advertising activity in Australia could be estimated to be in the billions already. This is untenable in a world where the expectation is for media budgets to be invested effectively. Ad fraud isn’t a factor with your local media vendors.
The move to greater consumer data protection and the subsequent impact on targeted advertising strategies means that 2024 will shine a light on the efficacy of various digital components of the marketing funnel. Conversion rate optimisation must be achieved in a privacy compliant manner, to achieve it otherwise risks fines and further erosion of consumer trust.
Risk management and data compliance are non negotiables in today’s corporate life. Marketer attention is being drawn to platforms and vendors where consumer privacy has primacy and where risk of breach is minimised or eliminated altogether.
Australia’s media companies are ahead of the regulatory requirements in this space and have demonstrated over decades that they are already experts in contextual targeting practices in both analogue and digital formats. They also nail the reach space.
2024 will be the year that reach makes a comeback alongside our local media platforms’ ability to create impact and awareness with contextual placement, targeting and integration across multiple delivery platforms and creative formats.
This is the year where media expertise and ad technologists merge. Perhaps 2024 is the year where these competing perspectives fully embrace collaboration for the benefit of their clients.
As custodians of culture and commerce, your local media vendors will benefit from the changes as advertising budgets find effective and safe havens in their care. The ability of these platforms to serve audiences with continued access to their stories as well as being credible sources of news and information, is dependent largely on receiving a fair share of the Australian advertising dollar.
In a world where there never seems to be a slow news day, advertiser support of platforms that provide these kinds of services results in increased consumer trust, effective advertising, privacy compliant practices and, most of all for Australian society, the continued health of our local media industry. Bring on 2024!
