(Finance) – Quick Google cwill be your support for third-party cookies, i.e. those that allow you to acquire navigation data for the purpose of
a more in-depth knowledge of the user’s tastes and needs, following the choice of Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft towards greater protection of privacy for the benefit of the user. This change, announced for the first half of 2024, could upend the way companies think about and process their customer data. Just think that, today, Chrome supports more than 61% of
all web traffic in Europe (59% in North America, 68% in Italy).
So how to manage a new user profiling method in an environment destined to become “cookieless”? The theme is addressed in the BCG study “It’s time to start your AI-led Data Driven Transformation”, which calls for a necessary and urgent transformation for companies oriented towards a deep knowledge of the reference consumers.
Effective personalization – it is observed – currently takes place through constant monitoring of the consumer, on the one hand through cookies for websites and on the other through the mobile advertising identifier (MAID), the unique identifier of the device. However, the growing attention to user privacy is an increasingly important issue for organizations and institutions, and user tracking limitations will result in less visibility of customer preferences. The new orientation will therefore lead to a lower ability to personalize experience, communication and product, with an estimated loss, for companies that have so far used these tools, between 1 and 5% of turnover, for the same investment.
“The process of profound digitization that has invested companies in the last twenty years has allowed them greater visibility on the choices and needs of consumers”, he explains Paola Scarpa, Managing Director and Partner of BCG, author of the paper. “Consumers, for their part, have begun to value personalized experiences more and moreto search for them and even request them in order to receive communications, services, offers increasingly adapted to one’s needs.
According to a global research by BCG conducted on markets and consumers, 66% of the latter believe that personalization contributes to the use of a positive experience during interaction with brands, with different levels of receptivity due to age, digital education and income. Yet, despite 64% of consumers saying they are in favor of companies using their data, 68% are annoyed by their sale.
The so-called “privacy by default”, therefore, is able to protect companies from reputational and financial risks associated with data breaches and misuse. It is a choice that can create trust in stakeholders, especially in an ever-changing regulatory framework, as well as bring management of the entire data chain within companies which, according to BCG, will make it possible to recover from 10 to 30% of investment efficiency.
“Land companies, even if belonging to different sectors, still seem unprepared for the changes that are about to arrive, given the lack of technological maturity and the risks associated with data management. Being aware of the gap between current capabilities and ambitions, however, is a powerful tool for identifying priorities and starting a transformation process”, underlines Scarpa again. “Which does not only involve developing a data collection and analysis work The creation of partnerships between the various players in the supply chain will be essential, for example, to exploit the potential of data to the fullest, balancing costs and generated value.”
For companies ready to insource third-party data management capabilitythe time has therefore come for a “Data-driven” transformation, that requires the ability to exploit data to its full potential.
It will therefore be important to define the direction in which the company is moving in order to concentrate all efforts towards a single goal: to change the data management culture by clarifying how everyone can contribute to this end, promote change through appropriate governance to rebalance priorities and ensure internal transformation runs smoothly. Finally, use AI to power efforts through automation and test & learn practices. This will result in applying data in optimization exercises and collecting it at each stage, to build proprietary foundations on which to scale Generative AI capabilities and become more competitive.