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Our next steps
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Or, would you like to help Social Bubble personalise ads?
The journey
This research sought to illustrate how brands can build trust with generation z while delivering personalised ads in a post-cookie and post-privacy world. Due to the timeliness and relevancy of the topic, I felt somewhat forced into different directions throughout my project, which in hindsight helped contribute toward a more rounded and thorough exploration of the relationships between privacy, personalisation, and trust. Plus, how they are hugely susceptible to the changing discourse from advertisers, tech companies and consumers. My literature review shed light on these themes and drew attention to the subject of my research, generation z, in the context of a cookie world. This foundation enabled me to approach my practice-based research from an angle of speculation since the direction of the replacement to cookies continues to evolve daily.
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My creation took the form of Social Bubble. A speculative browser extension that helps consumers exert control over their online data. In return for allowing selected brands access to selected personal information, consumers benefit from receiving personalised advertising, plus the advertiser will donate a given amount to a purpose the user is passionate about. I showed my gen z participants what a more consensual, more autonomous, and more socially rewarding data management and advertising platform could look like. By doing so, I was able to understand how trust can be leveraged by brands to encourage generation z consumers to actively want to share private data in exchange for personalised advertising. My research findings, broken down into my core themes of trust, privacy, and personalisation, highlight that I discovered something new about building trust with generation z in a world without cookies. These findings will be relevant for AdTech firms and brands navigating their forward-looking strategies for cookie depreciation. They are now refined into three original strategic implications.
Strategic
Implications
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Put the consumer in the control room
As the discourse around “my data” changes, we need to place the ownership of this capital back in the hands of whom it belongs. Instead of assuming or believing one size fits all, we have to be open to a more customisable approach for data collection. As I found during the prototype testing stage, generation z naturally have different preferences. For some, sharing income information was a step too far. For another, that was acceptable, but they were not willing to share their sexuality.
It will be interesting to monitor the extent to which control will be put into consumers hands. Based on my discoveries, being overly generous with consumer control should become a priority because it demystifies who and who not to trust. Empowering consumers to make decisions over private data, which ultimately, in their eyes, belongs to them, will allow us, advertising people, to get more creative with how we can tailor experiences based on the information users are willing to hand over.
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Building partnerships through doing good
Digital dependency and activism are two traits that more generally characterise generation z. An evident lack of trust of powerful actors, arguably led by third-party cookies, has compromised the trust consumers feel towards individual brands. In application, partnership building can be achieved through encouraging generation z to work with brands toward a shared social or environmental purpose. It will be interesting to see how brands can use digital spaces to help create an ecosystem that reduces the perceived risks of sharing private data and builds brand trust. It is, however, worth noting that brands need to be aware of the ‘woke’ and ‘cancel’ cultures generation z are a part of. Some seemingly good incentives can harbour unwanted backlash if there is uncertainty surrounding the degree of generosity, brand fit, and whether it is simply a façade for positive press.
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We need to consider terminology
I discovered that simple terminological alterations impact a consumer’s perspective on trust for data collection. While in reality, ‘personalised’ and ‘targeted’ are currently used interchangeably within the realm of online advertising, when asked the difference, my participants insinuated personalised ads have a more tailored and consensual approach. The language we use helps shape the framing of sensitive topics such as private data. As such, we should proactively refrain from using words that connote victimisation and non-consent, automatically leaving consumers feeling defensive. Building on this, we should also be focusing on keeping data management processes and the involved language simple, avoiding extended copy with technical jargon and legalise. These steps convey the intentionality of full transparency from the brand, helping to remove the mental barriers which would cause the consumers to doubt brand trust.
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Extensions
This research was either potentially very well-timed or very poorly timed. With the uncertainty surrounding cookie-less technologies and landscape more generally, this research should be viewed not as definitive truth, but as educated speculation. Google will release their Privacy Sandbox in the coming years, modifying APIs and restructuring the entire industry’s data collection. My learnings and strategic implications can be applied outside this definitive context and should not be dismissed if they do not fit around Google’s regulations. The scope of my findings asked bigger questions of how generation z feel about timeless themes of trust, privacy, and personalisation. As a result, it may be of interest to revisit Social Bubble in 2023 and beyond to consider whether my speculations materialise or whether the continuously evolving discourse renders them redundant. Regardless of the outcome, I sincerely wish my research will provoke inspired exploration and discussion of how a post-cookie world with trusted ad personalisation can build generation z trust.