Taking the Person Out of PII: Why We Need a New Approach to First-Party Data

Outside of search, social and commerce platforms, however, the use of data in display and video media has been dominated by the use of cookies in general and third-party cookies in particular. Third-party cookies, in theory at least, allow the advertiser to "identify" a previously unknown user and to resolve that identity to determine unique reach, to cap frequency, to re-target and to attribute an outcome. The bad news is that third-party cookies are disputably accurate and indisputably invasive.

Alongside identity lies the troubling idea that individuals are at risk if parties unknown to them nor permissioned by them can track their actions and infer their behaviors with any degree of precision.

Consequently, the use of cookies has been in the cross hairs of privacy advocates and regulators. Since the publication of the GDPR in Europe in 2016 it has been assumed that cookie usage would become restricted by some combination of regulatory tightening and browser-level actions. Apple implemented default third-party cookie blocking in Safari in May 2020 and since then it seemed only a matter of time before Google followed suit with similar settings in Chrome.

The industry response was predictable: pursue substitute anonymous identifiers and gather as much first-party data as you possibly can. Best to gain permission from more customers and prospects, at least to the level where the permissioned data can be used as a model for larger audiences.

There’s no question that first-party user-level identity and data can be useful, but it’s expensive to acquire, difficult to make persistently valuable and hard to scale.

Maybe there is a different way to think about the problem. The issue is that first-party data is generally taken to refer to data attached to personally identifiable information (PII). The only real owner of PII is the person in question. Maybe it's time to think of it also as corporately identifiable information (CII). Like data owned by the individual, data owned by the enterprise is precious, useful and proprietary.

To many advertisers, including many of the world's largest brands, CII may be more important than PII. The volume, value, cadence and location of sales is of inestimably higher value than individual behaviors. It's of value in all of targeting, trading and attribution. Critically, the proprietary knowledge it affords allows the advertiser the information asymmetry relative to both the seller and competitors required to trade effectively in reserve or auction markets.

If the advertiser has the mechanisms to apply data, he or she also requires the tools to assess the trade-off between the price of inventory and the cost of the precision of targeting in ways that are so much more textured than cookie dependency allows. For example, it becomes easy to assess if the premium for "zip plus 4" targeting is worth it versus DMA targeting. Equally, is any time Friday as effective as Friday between 5 p.m. and 8.p.m.? Return-on-data cost is a vital measure. Understanding the value of different data sets also helps advertisers assess the logistics and security of data sharing with their agency partners, technology intermediaries and media sellers.

These are thoughtful media trade-offs but they also require advertisers to integrate CII data streams into their advertising tech stacks and via API to DSPs and other partners in the advertising chain. Applying that muscle to the high stakes game of media investment is likely to enhance performance and lead to responsible behaviors by advertisers that maximize business outcomes and minimize cost to the consumer.

One-to-one marketing never was a necessity for most advertisers, and the pursuit of the data that enables it may come at an unnecessary cost to all concerned. Seems it's time for marketers to turn their attention to CII instead.

Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.