Data driven enterprises are more about culture than technology and nearly two-thirds of CEOs are making decisions based on gut instinct, according to a report commissioned by Alation. The biggest takeaway is that 65% of data professionals said their company's C-level executives ignore data when making business decisions. Why? CXOs think their gut instinct is the differentiator, according to these data pros. There is also the trust factor, 90% of respondents said C-level executives at least sometimes question the data they use.

With smart contracts, businesses can automatically execute, document, or control events and actions according to the terms of the contract, eliminating manual processes and disputes. This also prevents delayed transactions and drastically improves efficiency.

On 7 September 2020, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) adopted draft guidelines on the targeting of social media users (the “Guidelines”).  The Guidelines aim to clarify the roles and responsibilities of social media providers and “targeters” with regard to the processing of personal data for the purposes of targeting social media users.

Targeting services allow natural or legal persons (i.e., targeters) to communicate specific messages to the users of social media in order to advance commercial, political or other interests.  The Guidelines state that the mechanisms social media providers can use to target users, as well as the underlying processing activities, may pose significant risks to users, including loss of control over their personal data, discrimination and exclusion as a result of targeting on the basis of special categories of personal data, and manipulation through misinformation.  The Guidelines also raise specific concerns in relation to children.

What’s more is that 70% of Android apps that are currently being used have asked for dangerous permissions at least once.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2018, set the bar for data protection worldwide. This November’s proposed California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) closely mirrors the GDPR’s approach with three mainline items not included in the existing California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). These additions elevate the privacy protections of California residents.

“Whether your business is in California or not, the first step is to determine whether or not you need to be compliant. This requires leaders to know what type of data they are managing and whether there are any California citizens within their data sets,” says Shawn Rogers, VP of Corporate Marketing at TIBCO, a provider of big data and software integrations.

Privacy and data protection matter to consumers. In a 2019 California Privacy survey, 88 percent of residents backed the CCPA, and many supported more federal oversight on privacy laws. In addition, privacy and data protection directly correlates with the purchasing patterns of Americans.

Global research firm Gartner recently conducted its annual Security & Risk Management Summit, and perhaps the biggest headline to come out of it was the projection that the majority of the world will be covered by data privacy regulations by 2023.

This would be a very substantial jump in a relatively short period of time. At present, only about 10% of the world has strong privacy regulations akin to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Gartner believes that the GDPR will be the specific model upon which most of these new privacy regulations are based.

The EU standards essentially require other countries to implement privacy regulations that are on par with the terms of the GDPR. The recent Privacy Shield issue that has been playing out between the EU and US has been illustrative of this; EU court rulings have determined that the US is essentially going to have to pass its own federal-level data privacy regulations before EU personal data can once again be sent there.

“Now marketers are really measuring content on how much it correlates to brand value, and the past six months has brought us to a place in analytics that normally would have taken five years,” said Meggie Giancola, Head of CPG Sales and Strategy for Valassis. “How content is being used to motivate shoppers is much different than when this year started, so your analysis and measurement has to change.” 

Content analysis and measurement needs to focus on the specific shift in consumer behavior and mindset that has occurred. 

“Every analysis is different. So as long as the analysis is data-driven that is a quality start,” said Giancola. “When you are seeing a high volume of content or impressions with minimal purchasing you need to ask if it is a content issue, brand issue or pricing issue.” 

It may sound like an expensive, time consuming process for brands, but it’s one that can be leveraged back to the customer as a differentiator. “Privacy is becoming the sixth P,” said Gerry Murray, Research Director, Marketing and Sales Technology for IDC.

In Murray’s opinion, there’s a powerful advantage for brands that involve customers in a process that serves them better instead of just grabbing as much data as they can from their customers’ phones. “It’s becoming increasingly apparent to customers, which brands are on which side of the spectrum,” he said. “Unless you’re a monopoly or in some kind of rare, single-source position in the marketplace, customers are going to prefer brands that steward their data.”

For all their talk of transparency, most companies continue to make it difficult for consumers to exert control over their personal data. Ikea wanted to approach the issue differently, and collaborated with digital product firm Work & Co on a new set of digital tools that put privacy front and center. Customers can choose if and how their browsing and purchase histories are used to inform product recommendations, as well as how long Ikea keeps their data. Unlike many sites, which make privacy options almost impossible to find, Ikea’s data controls are seamlessly integrated into the shopping experience—users can swipe up to view and change their preferences at any time. “There is real value being exchanged,” says Dever Thomas, associate design partner at Work & Co. “[Many] people know what a personalized experience is and want that in exchange for being tracked. It builds trust.” Future features will let users see exactly how a given data point influences the search algorithm or changes the personalized recommendations. “I hope this leads to a larger paradigm shift,” says Thomas. “Instead of signing away all of your rights by pressing an ‘okay’ button when you first land on an app, [you] understand how data is used.”

The critical tool in making email valuable is the use of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) email format that allows recipients of AMP emails to interact dynamically with the content directly in the message.

The AMP format allows for:

Senders to include AMP components inside more dynamic emails;
Modern app functionality; and
A variety of interactive experiences such as surveys.
AMP emails are currently supported by Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook platforms, however Microsoft has announced its plan to create their own AMP-enabled dynamic email platform.

In the CDP Institute report, marketers also reported that integration with external systems (53%) tops things like ease of learning and use (51%), breadth of features (40%), operating costs for fees and staffing (36%) and initial costs of acquisition and deployment (32%) when martech leaders were asked what their company generally considers most important when selecting marketing technology.

And as for integration with internal systems, it wasn’t even close: 66% of leaders cited that as most important, dominating all other answers.

Think about that: integration trumps price, ease of use and features. The industry has come a long way.

According to another report from Bazaarvoice, 39 percent of consumers worldwide bought products from new brands this year, and 88 percent of those first-time purchasers indicated they intend to continue buying these brands in the future. More than half of consumers in the U.S. (51 percent) resorted to purchasing brands they hadn’t previously known about, likely a result of more well-known brands selling out their stock due to higher demand.

Forbes also reports that consumer loyalty has decreased as a result of the pandemic, adding another challenge to the many obstacles retailers already face. Their conclusion comes from a study conducted by Wharton Baker Retailing Center and WisePlum that indicates consumers experiencing problems or delays when ordering goods were 35 percent less loyal than those able to purchase products without complications.

1. Organize your team for success 
2. Recognize technology that’s worth the cost: The important thing to remember though, is that no one type of technology will guarantee strong results. Before going all-in-one technology that might sound and look good, make an effort to understand the algorithms at play and how they provide tangible, incremental value to the marketing process.
3. Know the data you’re using: To avoid the pitfalls associated with third party data, use your own data as much as possible. 
4. Reduce the partners on plan: It’s important to understand the outcomes you’re trying to achieve, and then choose the right partner for those outcomes. You need someone who can deliver on the various tactics needed to achieve your goals, and can do so without math that involves windows and ratios. The 200-pound gorilla is not your only option. Choose wisely.

LUMA is the leading investment bank focused on digital media and marketing. We provide strategic advice, proven M&A expertise, and extensive industry knowledge to optimize outcomes for our clients.

LinkedIn recently open-sourced GDMix, a framework that makes training AI personalization models ostensibly more efficient and less time-consuming. The Microsoft-owned company says it’s an improvement over LinkedIn’s previous release in the space — Photon ML — because it supports deep learning models.

GDMix trains fixed effect and random effect models, two kinds of models used in search personalization and recommender systems. They’re normally challenging to train in isolation, but GDMix accelerates the process by breaking down large models into a global model (fixed effect) and many small models (random effects) and then solving them individually. This divide-and-conquer approach allows for swifter training of models with commodity hardware, according to LinkedIn, thus eliminating the need for specialized processors, memory, and networking equipment.

• Lifecycle is a more holistic view of the customer journey – accounting for post-purchase touchpoints such as: adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy
• Increasingly, customers are expecting engagement in this context. And business leaders are expecting marketers to leverage this space
• Greenberg’s best practices include: tracking digital behaviors, defining segments pre- and post-acquisition, engaging around your offering, and developing advocacy programs

In the luxury market, there are three possible strategies: luxury, fashion, and premium. The difference between these strategies is enormous: for fashion and premium strategies, classic marketing styles work quite well. However, when it comes to luxury, you have to rethink the typical marketing strategies. 

1. The luxury strategy aims to create the maximum value for the brand and the full power to determine prices by exploiting all the intangible elements related to the brand identity, such as tradition, country of origin, history of craftsmanship, limited runs related to the scarcity of valuable raw materials, prestigious customers, etc.
2. Fashion strategy is a totally different business model: here time is not decisive; fashion sells by being “fashionable”, i.e. a transitory value, an object of a programmed obsolescence, to borrow a term from high tech. 
3. The premium strategy is an eminently comparative strategy. It can be summarized as a “pay more, get more” strategy where you must prove to customers that they’re getting the best quality for the price within a given category. 

• More Investment.
• Efficiency and Effectiveness.
• Sales and Marketing Alignment.
• Personalization.
• Advertising.
• Multichannel Marketing (Sometimes Called “Single Customer View (SCV)”).
• AI-Driven Workflows and Buyers’ Journeys.
• Conversational Marketing.
• Automated Attribution.
• Marketing Automation is No Longer Distinct From Any Other Marketing Strategy.

When Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey spoke at the virtual Oslo Freedom Forum 2020 on Friday, he said blockchain technology is the future of Twitter. 

"Blockchain and bitcoin point to a future, point to a world, where content exists forever," Dorsey said. "We're not in the content hosting business anymore, we're in the discovery business.

In short, Dorsey expects the nonprofit Blue Sky to create an open Twitter protocol, which users can contribute to and access data from instead of a centralized service where the social media platform hosts content on its website.