The Meta Insight Series – #1: Data Now Comes with a Health Warning

This four-part series lifts the lid on Facebook’s trade secrets in a bid to help Aussie businesses thrive post-pandemic.

Stu Stevens, a former Yahoo! exec and now M.D. of Sydney-based agency Remap Online is an Official Meta Marketing Partner. In this series, he shares four key insights that no other agency would dare tell you here in Oz for fear of retribution from the social media goliath.

Meta’s access to billions of data sets around the world helps them understand how digital is powering the success of some, but crucifying others. These insights give you the edge you need to win across data, creativity, content and commerce.

There’s no doubt that Data has created rivers of gold for many businesses all around the world.

It increases conversions, builds profits, reduces campaign risk and crushes the competition.

Exploiting this opportunity in recent years has been the domain of the fast-growing Ad-Tech industry. Global media Agencies and Enterprise level corporations with access to huge swathes of 3rd party data collaborated to change the ad game forever.

However, more recently, consumers from all parts of the world have been starting to wake up to the fact that their data is being mined, manufactured and traded in these highly profitable industries – all without their knowledge or consent.

This shift in awareness and public opinion is driving political action globally, and the evidence is stacking up:

  • 2018; the EU launches the General Data and Privacy Regulation Act (GDPR)
  • 2019; the US launches the Californian Consumer Protection Act (CCPA)
  • 2020; right here the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) published the results of a major survey into Community Attitudes and Privacy.

The commercialisation of third party data, and those that depend on it, will have to change their practices soon, or face extinction.

Take a look at these comments from some high profile individuals;

David Wehner, Meta’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call last year (2020), “While we’ve experienced some modest impact from these headwinds to date, the majority of the impact still lies in front of us”.

Angelene Falk, Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner on their recently published report, “Privacy is now the Australian Communities’ top consideration when we are choosing a digital service – ahead of reliability, convenience and price. [At the same time] trust in organisations to protect our personal information continues to decline.”

This shift in public opinion is powering politicians to rapidly change regulation, including the OAIC, which is now working towards a new privacy code for social media and online platforms.

This new code will be legally binding and seeks to improve the public’s ability to manage our own privacy choices with policies that can actually be understood, and transparent on the issue of consent.

Whist this code is being developed, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) already has enough teeth to take down the likes of Google under our existing Consumer Laws.

These types of court rulings will have a huge impact on the digital component of nearly every Australian business, both large and small – so, don’t wait till you’re forced to change by law (that’s expensive) you need to understand this global trend and start making changes now.

Read more about the ACCC’s recent win over Google in Federal Court.

Learn how the Australian Privacy Act is about to change and what it means for your business.

The insights in this article were supplied by Stu Stevens, Managing Director of Remap Online – an Official Meta Marketing Partner.