Balance between personalization & privacy to be paramount in building consumer trust

2024 is going to be marked by an evolving landscape, where innovation and adaptability will be paramount. It will require efforts from all stakeholders and players in the ecosystem to come together to harness innovative technologies, while proactively addressing challenges around privacy and ad fraud to thrive in this ever-evolving ecosystem. For app marketers to succeed in the new paradigm, it will be important to focus on getting the true value of their ad spends.

One of the ways would be to optimize the channels and partners to reduce overlap. Rather than trying to work with every available channel and then discarding underperformers, marketers would take a more selective and efficient approach by better pre-evaluation of potential partners based on platform capabilities, tech IP creation, and long-term viability. This shift will thus allow marketers to allocate their budgets more effectively and give each channel a better chance to succeed.

Trends & Innovations

GenAI takes centerstage: The evolution of AI and ML are redefining marketing and advertising. Now, with the advent of Generative AI (GenAI) and advanced LLMs, I anticipate predictive analytics, personalization, recommendation and advanced targeting to become more sophisticated. The key differentiation will lie in how businesses are able to deliver highly relevant and engaging advertisements while maintaining a privacy-first approach.

At Affle, we have been first movers of privacy-centric R&D focusing on ethical integration of AI to drive conversions. We recently filed 15 patents in this space, covering advanced AI subject areas, including automated AI agents, personalization & recommendation, predictive analysis, and enhanced fraud detection. These patents will power-up innovative use cases of interaction, training and integration of GenAI agents. In addition to the patents filed, we’re also driving innovation by leveraging AI in vernacular keyword research, strengthening brand safety in CTV with AI CTVSafe, and more across our platforms.

Balancing Privacy & Personalisation: We’re increasingly moving towards a world of privacy-first advertising. In recent years, with the enforcement of global policies & regulations like GDPR, CCPA, as well as changes to iOS through ATT, data protection and privacy have become cornerstones for advertisers, who now have to navigate on how to best approach audience targeting and measurement. With the impending changes to phasing out of third-party cookies & changes around Privacy Sandbox, businesses will need to quickly re-adapt their strategies and partner mix. They would thus need to partner with tech-driven platforms that are investing in product as well as R&D efforts to blend machine learning, contextual signals and probabilistic modeling to deliver targeted campaigns at scale effectively using SKAN and Privacy Sandbox, in a world where data signals are scarcer.

At an overall level, striking the right balance between personalization and privacy will become paramount to building consumer trust.

Integrated consumer journeys led by programmatic advertising: We can also expect more traditional advertising mediums to revolutionize aided by the growth of programmatic. With traditional mediums becoming largely digital in their consumption (TV to CTV, Newspapers to Mobile App, Radio to Digital Audio and OOH to DOOH), programmatic advertising will enable advertisers to craft a multi-channel integrated narrative. With the entire consumer journey being integrated the measurement too will evolve, allowing advertisers to move towards conversion-linked measurement across the advertising spectrum. This greater measurement will help marketers to better ROI and ROAS mapping that will in turn trigger changes in their advertising strategy and partner mix and should also drive growth in their advertising budgets. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.