Your Site's Privacy Notice Is Scaring Your Customers Off

Advertisers aren't convinced by Google's new Privacy Sandbox offering... Google's AI might change your business hours... Teenagers hate Instagram... And more!

Brands Are Weaning Off Cookies

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What are you doing to prepare for a future of cookieless advertising? According to an analysis, reliance on third-party cookies declined "significantly" last year as advertisers increased their investments in alternative options... But, there's still a long way to go. 

The survey found that 88% of advertisers still currently use third-party cookies, as of last December, suggesting advertisers aren't ready to give them up just yet. 

However, that's down almost 10% from the 97% of advertisers who were still using the tactic last May.

The analysis found that brands are prioritizing first-party data. Seven out of ten respondents used first-party data for targeting and measurement and experimented more with cohort- and contextual-based strategies.

As brands head towards a cookieless future, more are moving dollars to:

  • Social

  • Connected TV, and 

  • Digital video

Cookie deprecation fears also appear to be fading. Display advertising is believed to be the channel most affected by cookie deprecation. But, in December, fewer advertisers expected display, mobile, and social to suffer as much as they had in May.

The industry expects a 17% drop in performance when cookies are deprecated next year, down from 27% in May.

That said the cookieapocalypse continues to worry over 80% of advertisers.

Data has been provided by Advertiser Perceptions survey of over 150 advertisers and agencies.

Your Privacy Notice is Scaring Off Customers

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One of the jobs of a marketer is to instill in the consumer a sense of trust — trust in the brand, trust in the product or service, trust in how the company handles their personal data, and so on.

That latter job is often fulfilled by putting a privacy notice on the site. Sometimes we do it because it's the law in our country; sometimes, in an effort to show people we're a responsible company.

But are we shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot?

That's what Aaron Brough and his colleagues set out to discover. Dr. Brough is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He is the co-author of a new scientific research study called "The Bulletproof Glass Effect: Unintended Consequences of Privacy Notices."

DR. BROUGH: We conducted a series of six experiments involving nearly 20,000 people. And we compared consumers' interest in purchasing from a website or an app that either included or didn't include a privacy notice. 

One of the things we found is that telling customers how their personal data is protected can undermine consumer trust and discourage them from making a purchase. 

I like to compare it to going to an elementary school and seeing bulletproof glass and metal detectors. Their purpose there to protect you. But instead of making you feel safe, they could make you feel more more vulnerable.

TOD: It's interesting, because that's counter to everything that is both instinctive as marketers, and everything that's taught as well. You would think that the more we layer on "We'll take care of your data" language, the more secure people feel.

DR. BROUGH: Certainly this does challenge that intuition, that telling consumers how their personal data will be protected is going to be good for business. And for most firms and privacy advocates, that's not great news. 

Another thing we looked at, after initially discovering this, is how could we provide actionable guidance to managers on how to effectively convey privacy information without hurting purchase interest? So we tested how changes in the wording of a privacy notice affected consumers' willingness to purchase. We found that consumers were less turned off by privacy notices that included what we call "benevolence cues." 

So those would be statements like "We care about protecting your privacy," or "We respect you and promise to treat you fairly," or "We're committed to the protection of your information." 

The interesting thing is that although these statements don't offer any legal protection to consumers, they do seem to help build trust by conveying to consumers that companies have good intentions. So adding these benevolence cues to a privacy notice can reduce or even reverse its negative effects on purchase interest.

Among the other topics we chatted about:

  1. Whether that reduction in purchase intent also translated into a reduction in the perception of a product’s value.

  2. What differences there are between generations and genders

  3. The surprising effect that happened when he tested having people click a privacy link, and that link resulting in a 404 file not found error

  4. How marketers who can’t control whether or not there’s a privacy notice, or what it says, can counter some of its negative effects.

That full conversation will be releasing on the Premium Podcast Feed tomorrow.

Uncertainty of Google's "Topics"

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After Google announced stage one of testing for its Privacy Sandbox offerings a couple of weeks ago, many questions remain around its Topics program, regarding its implementation, effectiveness and impact on advertisers. 

A great piece in Marketing Dive today explores why advertisers remain uncertain. 

If you need a refresh, Topics replaces FLoC. The program works by collecting information on a topic a consumer has expressed interest in over the past three weeks and giving it to advertisers. To protect consumer privacy, information is only kept for a limited amount of time.

The article points out a few potential challenges for the program. 

Since Topics is being rolled out on a limited basis, it's hard to know how well it will perform. Using a limited scope will set the bar low and won't offer an accurate picture of how Topics will perform in the long run.

Another issue is scale. Because consumers must opt in, the trial may not gain the traction it needs.

The piece notes that Topics will likely never be as precise as third-party cookies; however, that doesn't mean there won't be any benefits. 

As a result, Topics' efficiency is unclear, a problem that will likely persist until the final technical design is understood. 

Google Will Auto-Change Your Business Hours

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Remember yesterday when we told you using AI to write your web pages is against Google's guidelines?

Funny how the rules don't apply to them! Google has shared how it uses artificial intelligence to update business hours on Google Maps. The company also shared that if it is confident enough in the AI’s prediction of what a business’s hours should be, it will change your brand's information.

Image: Google 

Here's how the AI analyzes information to determine if it should do the updates. 

First, to determine if the hours are incorrect, it looks at when the business profile was last updated, the times of similar shops, and data from Popular Times.

If the business hours appear to be incorrect, its algorithm looks at even more data to determine whether the hours should be updated, such as checking with real humans including: 

  • Google Maps

  • Local Guides, and 

  • business owners to verify predictions

Google doesn't explicitly tell users when hours are updated by its AI, and explained that AI is used "pretty much everywhere else" in Google Maps, the Verge reports. 

The company says it's “on track to update the hours for over 20 million businesses around the globe in the next six months.” Consider this your sign to make sure your business hours are correct or Google will do it for you.

TikTok Surpasses Snapchat

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New data indicates where you should be spending your ad dollars if your brand wants to target Gen Zs.

TikTok has finally surpassed Snapchat as the most popular social media app amongst teens, according to the report.

Here's how teens ranked the platforms:

  1. TikTok is the favourite social media platform 

  2. Snapchat took second place, and

  3. Instagram was third (again)

Over half said Amazon is their #1 favourite ecommerce site. 

The demographic also spent more — Spending increased by almost 10% compared to last year.

That's driven by females spending more on fashion, with clothing and footwear purchases up almost 15%. 

Similarly, digital purchases were boosted by fashion expenditures, with nine out of ten upper-income Gen Zs shopping online. 

Data has been provided from Piper Sandler’s survey of over 7,100 U.S. teens.

TikTok Continues to Lead Download Charts

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TikTok may be the top social media platform among teens, but it has the potential to become the #1 platform for all consumers.

A new report found that once again, TikTok was the most downloaded app this quarter, with more than 186 million installs globally. It dominated in Overall Downloads as well as on Apple's app platform, beating out Meta's platforms. 

Meta did however maintain its dominance of the Google Play chart. 

Facebook was the most downloaded app on Google Play last year, but this past quarter, Instagram claimed the top spot with over 125 million first-time installs. 

TikTok also maintained its position as the top-grossing non-game app overall as well as on the App Store. The platform generated over $820 million in consumer spending this quarter.

It's important to note that TikTok’s numbers include consumer spend on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which contributes to nearly 60% of its overall revenue

However, according to another analysis, U.S. spending on TikTok increased 125% quarter-over-quarter, suggesting that U.S. users are looking to spend more on the app.

Data has been provided by Sensor Tower and Data.ai.

Images: Sensor Tower and Data.ai

Twitter Tests "Unmentioning"

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Twitter is on a roll with giving marketers what they want this week. This time it's testing a new feature that comes in the form of brand safety.

Twitter announced its "experimenting with Unmentioning a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations—available on Web for some of you now."

Users with the test untagging feature can select the three-dot menu next to a reply to pull up a prompt offering to "get you out of this conversation."

The pop-up explains that leaving the conversation will untag you from replies, but your username will remain. If a user removes themselves from a tweet, their Twitter handle turns gray, and they can't be tagged back into the thread. 

Marketing Spend Is Accelerating

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A new report predicts annual marketing spend will increase by 30%, reaching $ 4.7 trillion by 2025.

The forecast, however, indicates that marketing spending is dependent on location as well as industry.

As a result of the pandemic, companies in China and India will see the fastest growth. Interactive media and services, as well as travel and leisure, are among the fastest-growing industries.

According to the report, U.S. companies spend the most on marketing, accounting for $1.4 trillion, or 40% of global marketing spend in 2021.

Data has been provided by Forrester.

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