The landscape of marketing has undergone drastic changes ever since Google announced the end of the third-party advertising era. As users demand more privacy, choices, transparency, and control over how their information is being used, to fulfil these demands third-party cookies were banned as they were a threat to the user's privacy. However, the show must go on, so the advertisers came up with an alternative approach: first-party advertising, which did not just replace third-party marketing, but gave better advertising choices to marketplaces, advertisers and sellers.

‍What is first-party advertising?

‍Websites, social media profiles, or products are equipped with pixels that collect first-party data. Information collected from the first party is most reliable for studying future behavioural trends and making predictions. Which gives the sellers a brief on their planning and management. Every time a shopper fills a survey form or clicks on a landing page or looks at a product the information is collected. As a result of these regulations, many marketplaces were able to serve their shoppers effectively. This also opened gates of opportunity for several industries and one such industry is retail media.

What can retail media do to protect customers’ privacy?

‍Retail media is the new dawn of advertising but the driving force of the industry is the shopper and they are demanding privacy. So, here’s how retail media platforms can deliver what their shoppers are asking for:

1. Let your customers take the decision:

Leveraging first-party data allows the shopper to know with whom they are sharing their information. This way they can control with whom they want to share their data, which they were not able to in third-party advertising. And if shoppers are sharing their information with you this shows their trust in you and your marketplace.

2. Assure your customer’s data is safe:

Most marketplaces are concerned that retail media platforms would be a threat to their shopper's privacy. However, it’s just the opposite. Privacy is a fundamental right of a human being and retail media respects that. Platforms like Monetize are hosted on AWS and Google Cloud, leveraging the unmatched security levels of two of the largest cloud providers in the world. Not only do these platforms allow Monetize to offer a reliable and robust solution, but also minimize the chances of data breaches.

3. De-identify Data:

De-identifying data is the best practice to protect shoppers’ data while analyzing it, as it breaks the link between the individual and their information. This mechanism requires transforming personal identities. 18 types of identities have to be transformed which include name, email address, and gender. Etc.

4. De-linking Data:

Some analytics and insights can only be derived by linking different databases together. However, this invites the threat of uncovering the identities of your shopper base. Practices like de-linking data should be practised to ensure data security and as long as analytics are concerned, there are many analytics tools available in the market that will give you accurate data without hampering the privacy of your shoppers. This way customers are getting the privacy they deserve, and advertisers will be able to retarget their audience. Win-win for everyone.

To conclude, retail media adds another wall of privacy between the shopper and the advertiser, which ensures that your shopper's data is not viewed or shared by one-third party, which your shopper is not aware of. It functions on the ground of consent where the shopper's trust is ensured and respected.