Facebook and Instagram can target ads so accurately that some people find it creepy. As Gayle King put it when she interviewed Instagram head Adam Mosseri last October:
“I can be having a private conversation with someone about something I'm interested in seeing or buying... and an advertisement for that will pop up on my Instagram feed. I haven't searched for it, I haven't talked to anybody about it. I swear I think you guys are listening.”
With e-comm accounting for 13.7% of global retail sales in 2019—that’s 3.453 trillion dollars—and rising, companies who step back to embrace the challenges head on will find golden opportunities to keep data safe will be the ones who not only avoid penalties and expensive data breaches, but also increase consumer trust.
Discussions of business use of consumer data often focus on legal issues, like risks and regulations. For good reason: the massive amount of personal information collected by governments and businesses can cause potential harm and huge fines if misused. So much so that newer privacy regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) limit uses of data and seek to give power back to the consumer.
