The news: As marketers navigate complex legal, ethical, and operational minefields around user privacy concerns, consent and preference management platforms (CPMPs) can streamline processes and build customer trust.
In a conversation with EMARKETER, Donna Dror, CEO of consent management platform Usercentrics, highlighted the importance of privacy-led marketing to obtain higher-quality data, stay compliant, and protect brand image. “We don’t believe there’s a tradeoff between growth and compliance,” Dror said. “Compliance can fuel growth.”
Why it matters: Dror described privacy-led marketing as using data collected with consent to improve compliance and business performance. She listed four main reasons why user privacy matters: It’s the law, it’s ethical, it improves data quality (and therefore results), and consumers increasingly demand it.
“If you’re doing something that furthers your ability to improve marketing and monetization, that’s what I call a win-win,” Dror said.
How it works: Data privacy solutions and CPMPs like Usercentrics help brands craft privacy policies that align with varying federal and state regulations, collect insights via A/B testing and analytics, customize consent banners for apps and connected TV (CTV) platforms, and organize users’ preferences for first- or zero-party data sharing.
AI challenges: Companies are adopting AI en masse. While this offers potential for efficiency gains, it also poses new consent hurdles. With 82% of the global population covered by privacy laws, per IAPP, businesses need to ensure data collection is consented and ethical.
- Dror said AI technologies often launch without privacy safeguards, with an emphasis on innovation and profit over data safety.
- She stressed that, while AI has been allowed to run before it walks, businesses need to integrate privacy considerations from the start.
What brands should do: CPMPs can help both solo entrepreneurs and global enterprises to safely and effectively build transparent, legally sound policies that earn consumer trust. To make privacy a priority, not an afterthought, brands should integrate consent tools into marketing workflows, audit data sources regularly, and communicate clearly how user data is being accessed and used.