The European Union’s 2016 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) kicked off a global shift towards more stringent data protection – now Australia is following suit with proposed amendments to its Privacy Act 1988.

The GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), launched in 2020, set new standards for data privacy, limiting how businesses collect, store and use sensitive consumer data.

“This transition will necessitate changes in targeted advertising practices.”

In Australia, the Attorney-General’s Department has put forward 116 proposals to amend the Privacy Act, with the federal government already agreeing or agreeing in principle to all but 10 of the proposals. Legislation is expected to be introduced and passed quickly in the coming months, signalling a rapid shift in the regulatory landscape.

Key changes and their impact on customer data

At the heart of these changes is an expanded definition of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This broader interpretation will likely include modern forms of personal data such as location information, IP addresses and device identifiers. It may even extend to inferred information about an individual’s preferences or predicted behaviours.

For brands, these changes signify a shift away from reliance on third-party data and towards a greater focus on first-party data. This transition will necessitate changes in targeted advertising practices. For instance, social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok can no longer simply check which users meet specific demographic criteria and push ads to their feeds based on third-party data. Instead, they must rely on first-party data and more sophisticated targeting methods.

Learning from privacy predecessors

While the transition may seem challenging, Australian brands can learn valuable lessons from their counterparts in the United States and Europe, who have already adapted to similar regulations.

Many businesses have successfully pivoted by utilising conversion APIs and developing robust first-party data strategies. For instance, instead of relying on cross-context behavioural data, companies are now targeting ads based on information voluntarily provided by users on specific platforms.

The state of preparedness

Recent studies indicate that many Australian brands are underprepared for these changes.

A recent survey by Arktic Fox revealed only 29 percent of marketing, digital, and ecommerce leaders believe their organisations are effective at activating data to deliver impressive customer experiences. Even fewer (22 percent) are confident in their organisation’s data management and maintenance practices.

This lack of readiness is concerning, given the potential consequences of non-compliance.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has flagged that it will impose fines of up to $2.2 million for each contravention on organisations that fail to meet the new standards.

Moreover, the Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey 2023 found that data privacy is the third most important factor for consumers when choosing a product or service, after quality and price. A staggering 92 percent of respondents said they would like businesses to do more to protect their personal information.

The role of customer data platforms

This is where Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) come into play.

They are designed to help brands navigate the complexities of new privacy rules by consolidating data from multiple sources into a single, manageable platform. This consolidation allows for the maintenance of accurate consumer profiles while facilitating compliance with consent management and data minimisation policies.

A well-implemented CDP can streamline the application of governance policies across all data types and sources. It simplifies the tracking and management of customer consent for data collection and use, making it easier for businesses to ensure their customer data activities comply with legal requirements.

Furthermore, CDPs can be configured to retain only the data that can be lawfully used and only for the period stipulated by privacy regulations.

Choosing the right CDP

When selecting a CDP, brands should look for features that facilitate easy compliance with privacy obligations while still allowing for the construction of rich customer profiles. The ideal CDP should also integrate seamlessly with existing tools and technologies.

Key features to look for include:

– Creates a unified customer view

– Usable and accessible data across the organisation

– Easy integration with other tools and platforms

– Orchestrates audiences across activation tools

– Supports cross-channel measurement

– Stays safe and compliant with changing regulations

– Performs at the scale and pace of customer data

As Australia moves towards stricter privacy laws, investing in a reliable CDP is becoming crucial for brands. This investment will enable them to build comprehensive customer profiles while ensuring compliance with upcoming regulations.

By taking this proactive approach, Australian brands can avoid the potential financial and reputational damages associated with non-compliance while also meeting the growing consumer expectation for better data protection.

A new frontier for customer trust

The shift towards stricter privacy rules presents an opportunity for businesses to build trust with customers by demonstrating a commitment to data protection. As the privacy landscape continues to evolve, those who embrace these changes and adopt the right tools, such as CDPs, will be best positioned to thrive in this new era of data privacy.

About the Author

Billy Loizou is are VP APAC for Amperity, a lakehouse CDP. He has 15-plus years in design, technology and marketing, helping some of the world’s most renowned and respected brands improve their customer experience and drive profitability.

The digital transformation of the traditional banking sector is creating a boon of digital and data opportunities to meet the needs of today’s digitally savvy consumers.

With nearly all (98.9%) of customer interactions now taking place via apps or online in Australia, this transformation provides financial institutions with a unique opportunity to use data to improve customer loyalty and drive growth.

“Legacy systems are not well-equipped to handle the volume and complexity of customer data”

Banks are sitting on a goldmine of untapped potential – first-party data that unlocks insights into customers’ needs and preferences. This data is the key to anticipating consumers’ needs and improving digital experiences, replacing a reliance on third-party cookies to target marketing efforts.

Let’s take a look at how to maximise the impact of first-party data to remain competitive, serve customers and grow revenue.

‘First’ things first: Collect the right data

Financial institutions must be aware that digital advertising is on the verge of a significant disruption due to the impending deprecation of third-party cookies. Traditionally, third-party cookies were the easiest way to secure customer insights and deliver personalised marketing outcomes. However, their value will soon diminish, and internal marketing, technology and data teams will be left to identify alternative ways to gather and act on customer preferences.

Without third-party cookies, banks will have limited access to customer data from external sources, making it harder to deliver personalised ads and marketing campaigns. Though third-party data collection is becoming a thing of the past, banks can invest more into gathering and organising customer data with new tools and cutting-edge platforms.

By using data that customers entrust to their banking provider, such as transaction history, product and service usage data, credit histories and customer service trends, banks can ensure that their efforts remain effective and compliant with new privacy restrictions.

First-party data, when collected and used ethically and securely, allows financial institutions to optimise their marketing strategy and better serve their customers.

Invest in the Right Technology

Though the financial sector has tried to modernise for decades, many financial institutions still operate on legacy systems that are not well-equipped to handle the volume and complexity of customer data. These systems often create incomplete data, which results in fragmented customer journeys, inaccurate information and a lack of real-time insights to inform business decisions. Additionally, increasingly stringent regulations, such as Australia’s Privacy overhaul, introduce an element of complexity for businesses to manage customer data and pose challenges in terms of data compliance.

Banks often rely on legacy systems for most processes, including marketing efforts. These outdated systems can struggle to resolve a unique identity across financial products and platforms. Leading banking and financial service providers have invested in a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to help resolve this issue. CDPs serve as invaluable tools for ensuring compliance with various data protection regulations, vital to enhancing both consumer trust and brand integrity. But beyond that, they allow financial institutions to aggregate and cleanse data to identify actionable insights and drive tangible results for their business.

These platforms also empower banks to tailor experiences to different customer segments. For instance, by analysing first-party data, banks can gain deep insights into their customers’ personal circumstances. This allows them to predict major life milestones that might prompt financial needs, such as buying a home, purchasing a new car or requiring additional lines of credit.

At the same time, the institution can use its data to better meet the needs of younger, digital-native customers – which is especially important with Gen Z and Gen Alpha burgeoning as a significant segment of the consumer market. And given how simple it is for consumers to switch banks, routinely providing relevant, timely offers along with personalised digital services are imperatives that banks can’t ignore.

Single Source of Truth

Creating a “single source of truth” with a CDP means building a central, unified repository of all customer-related data. It helps navigate privacy and compliance regulations while resolving the complexities associated with customers using multiple identifiers, such as various email addresses or phone numbers. By consolidating various identifiers into one comprehensive customer profile, a CDP enables more accurate targeting, personalised communication, improved customer service, and more effective strategies to attract and retain customers.

However, the efficiency of this process heavily depends on the sophistication of the CDP, the quality of the data integration and the protocols used for data privacy and security. With the wide range of capabilities available across CDPs, banks should look for the features that align best with their specific business goals, the size and skill set of their team, their data privacy obligations and the other tools already in their tech stack.

About the Author

Billy Loizou is Area Vice President for Amperity. With 15-plus year’s experience in design, technology and marketing he has worked with some of the world’s most respected brands, helping improve customer experience and drive profitability.

News that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is suing the trustee of Australia’s largest super fund over A$69 million in overcharged fees should be a warning to local data custodians.

ASIC has issued proceedings for AustralianSuper’s failure to consolidate the accounts of more than 90,000 members – costing them nearly $70 million in additional fees.

ASIC is alleging that AustralianSuper failed to have adequate policies and procedures in place to merge duplicate accounts, contrary to the fund’s duty to act in members’ best interests

The mismanagement of customer data resulted in duplication of fees and insurance premiums across accounts which summed to A$69 million. The fund has since pledged to refund affected members for the misconduct.

The incident serves as a stark reminder of how fragmented data can lead to financial losses and damaged customer relationships. It should act as a warning for businesses across APAC.

There are three principles that need to be addressed for good data governance, privacy compliance and for managing data for customer engagement:

1.      Data accuracy and integrity: Brands must properly know their customers by maintaining data that is both comprehensive and accurate. AustralianSuper’s failure to consolidate accounts and manage member data properly was a fundamental failure of this principle. It underscores the critical role of accurate and up-to-date data in decision-making and customer data strategies.

2.      Privacy compliance: ASIC’s lawsuit demonstrates that lapses in privacy compliance can have severe legal and financial consequences for businesses. Brands must ensure they have robust policies and procedures in place to protect customer data and comply with evolving regulations.

3.      A unified customer view: The ability to create a unified view of customer interactions is essential for mitigating similar issues. There are wider benefits of a unified view of customer data such as delivering personalised experiences, enhancing customer retention and optimising marketing efforts. This case highlights the detrimental impact of fragmented data.

The need for identity resolution

While double-dipping customer fees cost the super fund both financially and reputationally, investing in identity resolution software could have saved it a lot of grief.

ID resolution platforms enable brands and organisations to improve controls over customer data, systematically identify customers’ truly unique relationships and almost certainly could have avoided costly mishaps like this.

Best-in-class ID resolution software utilises machine learning (ML).

ML technology means that data matching rates and accuracy improve over time, even when unique identifiers are incomplete, inconsistent or unavailable.

This form of ID resolution uses ‘probabilistic’ data linking, allowing human-like logic to reveal inconsistencies that more rigid matching schemas struggle to identify.

Another feature of good ID resolution software is transparency, providing clear insight into processes that are running and recommendations. This builds greater confidence versus ‘black-box’ processes that don’t show how an answer came about. Enterprise scalability is also important – handling and resolving massive numbers of customer identities quickly and cost-effectively, regardless of database size.

Together, these capabilities are known as a customer data platform (CDP) and this case shines a light on why they are increasingly important.

A CDP, such as Amperity, unifies your online and offline customer data. It takes data from every source inside your organisation and consolidates it, so you can better understand each person behind the data. It also provides confidence knowing customer data is unique and robust enough to target segments more accurately.

In conclusion:

This ‘uh-oh’ moment from AustralianSuper should serve as an ‘ah-ha’ moment for brands across APAC.

It demonstrates the importance of sound data management, privacy compliance and the creation of a unified view of customer data. And, in so doing, the avoidance of costly legal repercussions.

About the Author

Billy Loizou is APAC Area Vice President for customer data platform provider, Amperity. He has worked with some of the world’s most renowned brands to improve customer experience and drive profitability.

Australia is undergoing a data revolution with multiple drivers amplifying the need for data privacy and protection.

It has put the data-driven marketing and advertising industry into a state of flux.

From a customer experience perspective, abiding by privacy guidelines and connecting with known consumers is a much more fruitful and rewarding strategy over a shotgun data acquisition strategy to attract and convert anonymous prospects.

Anyone who has experienced being targeted with advertising for something they have just bought will understand the frustration it generates.

There’s both challenges and opportunities emerging with the changes.

Understanding the new data privacy landscape

The digital landscape in Australia has faced game-changing challenges recently, forcing brands to adapt their ad tracking solutions to ensure they comply with new and evolving regulations.

“Data breaches are only made worse by holding onto personal information they don’t have a legitimate interest in”

The most obvious is adapting to measures put in place by Apple and Google, which have introduced new privacy features that restrict tracking on their devices. This has meant that some tracking methods marketers previously relied heavily on are no longer effective. In fact, 64% of advertisers recently shared that Apple’s Application Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy is hurting their results.

Tough new European GDPR regulations, alongside US privacy changes have further shifted the dial away from brands and towards consumers.

And there’s more change in the wings locally. The Australian Attorney-General’s Department recently released its highly anticipated review of the Privacy Act 1988, which includes a suite of proposed revisions to bolster individual privacy rights, such as the “right of erasure,” deindexing search results with sensitive or inaccurate information, among many other changes. New Zealand has also passed changes to its privacy regulations with similar implications.

If the large-scale Optus and Medibank breaches have taught brands anything, it’s that data breaches are only made worse by holding onto personal information they don’t have a legitimate interest in and/or is well past its expiration date.

Technology choices to mitigate risk

The best way businesses can minimise risk and steer clear of poor tactical or technology choices is by improving their defensive strategies. This means wrapping best-in-class protection around their customer data.

While sales and marketing tactics are important and can have a direct ROI, longer-term loyalty is built by providing individuals with visibility and control over their data and its usage.

Preference centres are not new, but they are fast becoming a must-have utility that all businesses should leverage.

Transparency is also key. Businesses should be fully transparent with consumers about the data they collect and how it’s used. They need to clearly communicate their data privacy policies, making it easy for consumers to opt out of data collection or marketing activities if they choose.

At the same time, brands need to monitor and respond to feedback from consumers. And importantly, take action when issues are identified. Processes should be in place for responding to complaints and addressing concerns.

Performing proper due diligence around these best practices can help those in CDO/CIO roles make better technology choices from the start and reduce their exposure to the risk of regulatory or consumer action.

Identifying first-party data

Customer metrics drive business metrics. All the regulatory changes point to first-party data as a vital asset powering sales and marketing strategies.

Identifying and understanding your customers translates to improved customer retention and helps brands keep up with ever-evolving purchasing habits.

Using first-party data, companies are seeing up to a 5X return on ad spend in paid channels. And recent research shows that brands using first-party data in key marketing functions achieved a 2.9X revenue lift and a 1.5X increase in cost savings.

But how do you identify and resolve customer data into a single view of the customer across the business? Are your marketing, sales, service and loyalty systems interconnected?

A consolidated customer data platform (CDP) can help. A CDP provides marketers with a strong customer identity foundation, allowing them to build the most accurate and comprehensive view of their customers from across disparate systems, helping centralise data management.

This is where Amperity is laser-focussed.

Using a patented machine learning approach, Amperity’s first-party data ID resolution is purpose-built to create unified customer profiles, giving teams the data they need to understand customers, engage with them in a personalised manner – and translate that into growth.

It’s also important to note that customer data isn’t just for marketers. After building a secure unified view of customers, that data can be made available to trusted agencies, account managers, business analysts, IT operations teams and product developers.

In a privacy-first world, all roads lead to first-party data

Regardless of the mountain of challenges that Australian businesses face, one critical point to address is ensuring their first-party data is in order. First-party data will be used for activation, suppression and measurement, replacing third-party tag-based measurement.

It’s a matter of being prepared and saying good riddance to bad data practices.

About the Author

Billy Loizou is APAC Area Vice President for customer data platform provider, Amperity. He has worked with some of the world’s most renowned brands to improve customer experience and drive profitability.