consumer privacy Archives - Thunder Experience Cloud

Hershey’s Talks “Truth in Measurement” and Driving Transparency

Vincent Rinaldi, head of addressable media at Hershey’s, talked to Digiday recently about the famous candy maker’s efforts to improve measurement and ad transparency. Hershey’s is part of a growing number of brands participating in “Truth in Measurement” industry group founded by Thunder to promote discussion and standardization around measurement data sharing.

Here’s an excerpt from Digiday’s February 5th interview:

Hershey’s is one of the founding advertisers behind the ‘Truth in Measurement’ initiative led by ad tech firm Thunder Experience Cloud, a model that will allow advertisers, media owners and ad tech vendors to support a transparent measurement of ad data across platforms.

While nothing concrete has been drawn up yet — a summit will be held in the U.S. later this year between the initiative’s backers to find one — Rinaldi said it would focus on measurement like verification and attribution data, rather than targeting data. The approach is similar to the cross-platform measurement model Unilever is testing in several markets now. It’s more likely that online media owners will back initiatives like ‘Truth in Measurement’ and Unilever’s alternative when they don’t insist on them having to part with the valuable targeting performance data that serves as the backbone of their commercial strategies.

“We want to create community gardens not walled ones,” said Victor Wong, CEO at Thunder Experience Cloud. “The initiative we’re working on will be a technical standard that any advertiser or platform can follow to share data. First, we have to figure out what data at a minimum to get ad transparency into what they buy and then we need to work out what the media owners are willing to share so they’re not compromising the privacy of their users or their own business models.”

If you’re interested in joining the discussion and setting the new standard, please join the Truth in Measurement advisory board.

Thunder Announces Industry Group to Improve Advertising Measurement Standards for Brands, Publishers and Consumers

(GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Thunder Experience Cloud, the leader in people-based ad serving, today announced Truth in Measurement (TIM), a new industry group that aims to develop a technical standard for the sharing and measurement of advertising data in a transparent way that protects both consumer privacy and publisher data. The initiative is led by top executives from some of the world’s biggest brands and ad platforms.

One of the major industry issues TIM aims to improve is of ad transparency in the age of consumer privacy and data leakage. Historically, this has made it difficult for advertisers to measure their ads and verify the results. To tackle these challenges, TIM plans to develop a framework for providing ad exposure measurement tied to anonymized IDs for measurement only.

“Publishers can simultaneously protect consumer privacy and provide transparency to advertisers with TIM’s framework of sharing ad exposure data tied to a privacy-conscious ID,” said Victor Wong, CEO of Thunder. “Rather than be a walled garden, you can be a ‘community garden’ to share data while protecting your business model and consumer privacy.”

“TIM’s measurement solution protects data and is transparent for advertisers, publishers and consumers,” said Alysia Borsa, chief data officer at Meredith. “The ability to accurately map measurement is crucial for every industry player and TIM is leading the way in new verification, analytics and attribution.”

At the same time, TIM will focus efforts on enabling people-based measurement. While the industry has been focused on developing channel-specific measurement for several years, there has been a lack of attention around people-based measurement, i.e. tracking ad exposure and conversion by person across channels. Without this type of de-duplicated measurement, it is impossible to know the true ROI of any campaign.

“The need for higher data protection standards and rise of omni-channel advertising campaigns has made it increasingly difficult for advertisers to track, measure and verify the results of various consumer interactions across multiple platforms,” said Vincent Rinaldi, head of addressable media at Hershey’s. “TIM provides a first step to solving a problem numerous stakeholders face – promoting transparency while simultaneously respecting the consumer’s privacy.”

“Some major platforms have begun redacting data such as user IDs they previously provided, and this is something that can no longer occur in the industry,” said Trace Rutland, director of media innovation at Tyson Foods. “We are excited to be partnering with industry leaders on this initiative to encourage advertisers to holistically and accurately measure impact with TIM’s framework.”

Brands, publishers and consumers can rely on TIM to establish a framework that will solve for their different needs.

To learn more about TIM’s efforts and upcoming events, please visit: http://truthinmeasurement.com

New California Privacy Law Compared to GDPR – Summary

Ka Mo Lau
October 3, 2018
Ad Serving / consumer privacy / Research

Digital marketers just rushed to meet GDPR compliance in May 2018 for digital marketing in Europe. They now need to rush to meet a new California privacy law put in place that will go in effect in January 2020. Compared to GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (also known as CaCPA or CCPA) balances commercial and consumer interest much more to enable digital marketers to continue data-driven marketing while giving consumers more protections and options.

Similarities:

Both CaCPA and GDPR

apply to businesses that are not located within their borders
assign responsibility for enforcement to a governmental authority
do not permit discrimination against individuals who exercise their legal rights
provide individuals with certain rights with respect to personal data; including the right to access and delete their personal data
address some similar concerns (e.g., the importance of access and transparency)
will require businesses to expend time and money to achieve compliance

Key Distinctions:

GDPR comprehensively addresses many privacy concerns (e.g., disclosures businesses must make to data subjects, process for data breach notification to individuals and regulators, implementation of data security, cross-border data transfers, etc.) while CaCPA is focused on consumer privacy rights and disclosures.
GDPR provides comprehensive private rights of action while CaCPA does not create a private right of action except for data breaches (and with many requirements).
GDPR provides a more comprehensive set of rights to consumers, including the right to data correction and the right to data portability, which CaCPA does not have (unless the business decides to respond to a request for portability by providing the data electronically, in which case it must do so it in a readily useable format that can be transmitted to another entity only to the extent it is technically feasible).
GDPR includes considerably more comprehensive requirements on businesses, including privacy by design and default, foreign company registration requirements, data protection impact assessments, 72-hour breach notification, data protection officer requirement, and restrictions on cross border transfers.
GDPR requires data controllers to sign formal, written agreements with processors that meet stated requirements of a processor’s handling of personal data. CaCPA requires only requires a written agreement with a third party in very limited circumstances.
GDPR requires businesses to assume and contract for appropriate technical and organizational security precautions. CaCPA does not mention security other than to provide a cause of action for lawsuits on behalf of consumers for the unauthorized access, exfiltration, theft, or disclosure of personal information that is not encrypted or redacted that results from the failure to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices.
The GDPR requires that businesses must have a legal justification before it collects, processes, or transfers personal information, with a consumer’s informed and unambiguous consent as a single means of achieving that legal justification. CaCPA on the other hand does not require businesses to have such legal justification and uses an opt-out approach

Detailed Comparison

If you’re worried about your compliance with both laws, you should read Part II of GDPR vs California Consumer Protection Act that covers in more detail the nuanced differences and why compliance with one law doesn’t ensure compliance with both.

Thunder’s Role

Thunder Experience Cloud enables the advertising ecosystem to balance consumer interests in privacy with commercial interests in data-driven advertising. Thunder helps ad platforms prevent data leakage, consumers gain privacy, and advertisers obtain transparency through its anonymized people-based measurement solution. Ask us how to protect consumer data while supporting data-driven advertising if you’re interested to learn more.

Call for Advertising Industry to Protect Consumer Privacy, Provide Ad Transparency, and Secure Publisher Data

Ka Mo Lau
August 30, 2018
Brands / consumer privacy

Thunder’s mission is to solve bad ads. To that end, Thunder joined the Coalition for Better Ads at the end of 2017. Now, Thunder is calling for the industry to go beyond just higher standards for creative. Thunder wants to put in place stronger protection for consumers and publishers while also providing greater transparency for advertisers.

Thunder had the recent honor of guest writing in the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) on what Cambridge Analytica taught the ad industry about what consumers expect and what publishers will need to do going forward. In this column, Thunder CEO also touches on how advertisers can work with these groups to ensure a better Internet where only effective, non-intrusive advertising rules. Here’s an excerpt:

Ultimately, everyone has to give a little something to get much more in return. Moving advertising to an anonymized ID tied to ad exposure will benefit the entire internet. Consumers will get better advertising and privacy, publishers will remove their liability and data leakage, and advertisers will gain transparency into their advertising.

How does Google’s Ads Data Hub Affect My Analytics? (Part III of the Ads Data Hub Series)

Note: We provided an overview of Ads Data hub in Part 1, and how Ads Data Hub will impact DMP’s in Part 2. This post covers data lakes and how analytics will be impacted in the Ads Data Hub world.

Many large brands today have set up “data lakes” where all their data gets stored and made available to other applications for processing and analysis. These data lakes combined with business intelligence tools such as Tableau have created powerful analytics environments where brands can answer questions such as:

What customer segment is most responding to my ads?
Which ads are leading to the most amount of lifetime customer value?
Do people who see my ads spend more with me?
Am I spending more money to reach my customers than they are spending with me?

Brands have staffed up data analysts and data scientists to make sense of all this data and answer these important business questions to improve strategy and validate what partners are telling the brand.

Data lakes ultimately rely on data to flow into them. Google’s recent changes with Ads Data Hub keeps data locked within Google Cloud and cannot be combined outside of Google’s controlled environment. As a result, data lakes for marketing are under threat by recent changes by Google.

Consequently brands with sensitive customer data are forced to decide whether to upload that data to Google to run in a Google-controlled data lake or keep it off the Google Cloud where they’ll need to find other vendors to solve their needs for tracking, analyzing, and modeling.

If you want to maintain control of your own data lake and preview it from drying up, talk to Thunder about our Experience Measurement solution.