The Battle For Your Digital Soul
I recently made a switch from Google Chrome to Safari as my primary browser. The main driver of this decision was the bloat and lag time that is Chrome. Chrome can kill the battery life of a MacBook sitting in the background with a few tabs open. Often I would experience a browser hang, taking minutes before I could continue working.
My change in habit also comes at an interesting time. Recent updates to Mac OS and iOS brought more default privacy features than we have ever seen before. This push by Apple is an effort to be more transparent about the personal data that is actively collected.
Safari is now blocking trackers by default and informing you about the data being tracked. If you want to see this in full effect, look at the data-points Facebook is collecting using the app installed on your iPhone. The mile-long list will seriously make you think about deleting it from your phone.
These changes are just the beginning, as consumers become more conscious of their personal data.
The question businesses need to ask now, how will they adapt? Creating a personalized consumer experience is still more important than ever, but the data once used is becoming limited. The focus will need to shift to first-party data. Permission-based marketing should be a priority for every business in 2021.
Collecting, processing, and activating owned data on your customer and prospects will enable businesses to stay ahead of the larger privacy crackdown that is coming.
The privacy landscape has shifted even faster than most predicted. Google delayed and then finally moved forward on deprecating third-party cookies. Apple doubled down with App Tracking Transparency, and the numbers are brutal for advertisers — most users opt out when given the choice. The writing has been on the wall for years, but many businesses still operate as if the old playbook works. It does not. The companies that invested early in first-party data strategies are the ones thriving now, while everyone else scrambles to rebuild their targeting from scratch.
What I find most interesting is how this shift forces better marketing. When you cannot rely on creepy cross-site tracking to follow someone around the internet, you have to earn their attention. You have to create content worth opting into, build email lists people actually want to be on, and deliver value before asking for anything in return. The privacy crackdown did not kill personalization. It killed lazy personalization. The businesses that treat their customers like partners in the data exchange rather than targets to be surveilled are building deeper loyalty than retargeting ads ever could.
If you have not started building your first-party data infrastructure yet, the time to start was two years ago. The next best time is right now. That means investing in a real CDP or at minimum a well-structured CRM, creating gated content that people genuinely want to exchange their email for, and building feedback loops that turn every customer interaction into usable data you own outright. The battle for your digital soul is not just a consumer problem. It is a business strategy problem, and the winners will be the ones who figured out how to grow without borrowing someone else's data.
Related: Cut The Crap and The Stories We Tell.
