Leveraging automation technologies and AI to gather data has always been a very lucrative option for marketers to develop personalized marketing strategies. But, with more powerful consumer privacy regulations coming in, things won’t be that easy anymore
The golden era of consumer protection has come in with the European Union‘s GDPR and CCPA, demonstrating a new approach of “consumer security first.” And this is not a temporary change as these policies have disrupted the way firms do businesses. Combined results from various surveys bring out a critical situation. It appears that about 56% to 80% of companies are not yet prepared for the right processes to comply with CCPA.
Businesses are confused about CCPA and other associated issues like denial, lack of funding and legal implications. Companies are encountering blind spots related to CCPA; they need to take necessary steps to ensure smooth adoption. Given here are the top three blind spots associated with CCPA readiness:
- Companies assume they will have enough time to prepare, since enforcement won’t begin before July 1, 2020.
Indeed, CCPA won’t be enforced immediately; but it’s wise for companies to start preparing for the change right away. CCPA will play a significant role in the broader scheme of things as the right to privacy, and the power of enforcing it will now lie with the California consumers. Consumers will now have complete transparency regarding the third parties using the data and also have the choice to decide whether to share all the information or not. This is a massive change with a slow compliance pace, but waiting for the eleventh hour could be suicidal.
Read more: 2020 will be a “Gap Year” for Individual Ad Tech Firms with the CCPA…
- Marketers prefer waiting to see how CCPA will be enforced by the industry and their competitors before embracing the changes themselves.
Similar to GDPR implementation, CCPA enforcement is expected to start small. But, it will inevitably grow, so firms should smartly take sufficient time to understand how customer data should be handled. Waiting for competitors to first react to the change might make the adoption process more long-drawn and difficult. The best mantra for businesses is to build compliance into the development-cycle get CCPA-friendly with time on their side.
Fines for violating consumer privacy regulations are large. The CCPA may penalize companies with $7,500 for each record of intentional violation and $2,500 for each record of an unintentional breach. This is per record, and a company might deal with hundreds, thousands or millions of such data records. In such cases, the amount of fine can go up to almost half of the turnover of a company.
- GDPR-complaint companies don’t need to worry about CCPA, as both are similar.
Except for the difference in the geographical areas they cater to, there are significant similarities between the two regulations. Being GDPR-ready means that the company has an intrinsic process for data privacy protection in place, which is also very helpful for meeting the challenges of CCPA. However, CCPA in few ways actually goes far beyond the scope of GDPR, so companies need to prepare for it differently. CCPA focuses on for-profit businesses, so it is definitely a bigger deal for marketers.
The concept of protecting customer privacy is enjoying all the hype, and this is not being decreased in 2020. The best approach to prepare for CCPA is to follow the same strategies that companies adopted while preparing for GDPR. Firms are recommended to have in place a well-practiced system for identifying customer data, ensuring complete transparency regarding data utilization, and seeking permission before utilizing customer data.
Read more: Publishers Seeking CCPA Opt-out Tools Collaborate with the Digital Advertising Alliance
