Three global digital marketing chiefs – led by a former Unilever legal counsel – have launched a digital data compliance platform aimed at tackling adtech’s most potentially illegal issue, which sees brands unwittingly pass personal customer data to third-parties before user consent has been received.
According to the co-founders of Compliant, while 92% of European publishers now operate a consent management platform (CMP), more than four-fifths (81%) are still passing on data before they get permission to do so.
The co-founders arguably know their stuff; the business is spearheaded by CEO Jamie Barnard (pictured, centre), who was general counsel for global marketing and media at Unilever for 15 years before launching the start-up in July this year; chief client officer Magid Souhami (left), meanwhile, has held the role of director of global marketing procurement for both General Mills and Procter & Gamble, the latter for 11 years; and finally COO Elliot Bell (right) is a 25 year media and tech veteran, having held senior roles at Facebook, Yahoo, Live Nation, and Walmart.
To mark the launch of the business, Compliant has published a new report “Data Privacy: The Compliance Illusion”, which they claim is the largest audit of digital marketing compliance ever undertaken, covering over 86% of all European web traffic.
The company, which is a strategic partner of the World Federation of Advertisers, argues that with regulatory scrutiny intensifying in digital marketing, privacy compliance has risen to the top of the C-suite agenda.
Brands and publishers must balance the increasing demand for data with rising consumer expectations of transparency, choice and control, yet many are in breach of European, US and international data protection laws without even knowing it.
With billions of items of personal data being traded online every minute, Compliant maintains that manual compliance of the digital advertising ecosystem is not viable given the scores of intermediaries collecting and sharing data, the speed of transactions, and the intensity of the resource requirements to do so.
The co-founders insist the report reveals the extent to which companies operating within the digital marketing ecosystem are exposing themselves to data compliance risk.
Using its proprietary Data Safety Index and automated monitoring of digital media supply chains to audit the world’s leading advertiser and publisher sites, it also found the average European publisher site contains 27 piggybacked tags. These are third-party tags that are making data calls but are often not authorised or placed within the site by the domain owner.
The average number of data resellers within a European publisher’s site has dropped considerably since GDPR was enacted, however, some brand sites still contain up to 18 different data resellers.
While 92% of European advertisers now employ CMPs on their owned and operated sites, 88% of them are installed incorrectly, so data is passing before consent is received and exposing brands to even greater regulatory risk.
Naturally, the start-up claims its platform gives brands and publishers full transparency of their data supply chain – who has access to it, what they use it for, who they share it with and what they do with it.
Barnard said: “The lack of transparency in the digital media supply chain means that companies have limited visibility of the intermediaries operating on or through their websites, making the ongoing detection and management of unlawful and unethical data practises a significant challenge.
“The results of our audit report are a wake-up call for the industry, with brands and publishers exposing themselves to regulatory and reputational risk. We’re here to give companies the tools they need to be compliant in a world of constantly evolving privacy expectations. Current market solutions are not fit for purpose. Automating privacy compliance with an always on platform is the only viable option.”
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