As privacy regulations tighten around the world, Tealium global boss Jeff Lunsford told B&T in an exclusive chat, that companies are grappling with effective ways to manage first-party data across their various media and marketing channels. AI will only accelerate the need for companies to get their houses in order on first-party data and consent.
Lunsford, a former naval aviator, knows a thing or two about navigating complex environments.
The serial entrepreneur, who has been at the helm of Tealium since 2013, said that companies across the world are trying to work out how to manage first-party customer data and consent in marketing and customer services.
This has led to a rise in the use of customer data platforms (CDPs), software solutions that provide companies with a single view of customer data, allowing businesses more effective customer experience and marketing and operational efficiencies.
Lunsford spoke to B&T recently about the growing importance of managing first-party data and consent in real-time, especially with AI models growing in use.
“With every year, where you get more and more privacy lockdowns, the likes of Apple blocking data and the deprecation of third-party cookies, our vision of first-party data being your most valuable strategic asset is coming true,” said Lunsford.
“But that is also being hit on the head with all of these new privacy regulations. We built a platform with the founding belief that data should be real-time. You should be able to engage with these customers in real-time based on what they’re doing at that moment.”
Australian CDP use on the rise
Tealium is regarded as one of the largest and most sophisticated CDPs globally, and in Australia, it has some of the best traction in terms of the number of clients it works with. Tealium works with several blue chip companies in Australia, including Woolworths, NAB, Bupa and REA.
Lunsford, pictured below, described Australia as one of his “favourite markets”. Even though it was a late adopter of CDPs compared to the US, Lunsford said that Aussie companies have quickly caught up.
He said the table stakes are high for companies to get their first-party data and consent architecture in shape or risk falling foul of privacy watchdogs.
“[CDPs] have gone from a nice to have 10 years ago to a must-have now,” he said. “You have also in the United States of America where if someone maliciously violates privacy rules you can go to jail. In Australia, I’ve heard that if you send an email to someone who’s been opting out, you can get fined $1,000 per email.
“So if someone opts out of one channel and you are an omnichannel company, you need to know how to federate that opt-out across all the other different channels and make sure that someone that opted out over a mobile push is not still going to collect emails or get an outbound call from the call centre.
“You have to collect and orchestrate that consent. That’s one thing that Tealium does with our consent orchestration tool.”
The evolution of consent
Lunsford believes that consent will evolve to become more nuanced rather than a binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ opt-out. He said customers may soon be looking for a range of ‘opt-in’ choices, including being able to choose only communicating in certain channels or only at certain times of day.
In addition, Lunsford is a firm believer that companies that act on consent and data in real-time can produce far more efficient and effective marketing and customer services.
“There have been umpteen studies about the value of real-time. You get a roughly five times higher conversion rate for any kind of campaign, whether it is an email campaign, banner campaign, retargeting and so on if you’re activating it in real-time,” he said.
“What all of these guys across the digital advertising endpoint universe have been saying is they see on average a 25 per cent improvement in return on ad spend or conversion rates when they go server side with these conversion APIs (a software intermediary that allows two different software apps to talk to one another).
“In London, one of our large retail customers said when they went live with the Pinterest API, their revenue went up 47 per cent. When they went live with the meta API, the revenue went up 66 per cent. When they went live with the Google API, their return on ad spend went up nine to 15 per cent. We’re talking about massive improvements and it’s all about this first-party data.”
Even though Google recently backflipped on a decision to deprecate third-party cookies on its Chrome browser, Lunsford said signal loss is a real issue that companies still need to grapple with.
Tealium is hosting an event about the next frontier of data management in Melbourne on the 10 October with speakers from AWS, Civic Data, EssenceMediaCom, The Trade Desk, TikTok and Snowflake.
Register your interest to attend here.
