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Apple’s unrolling iOS 14 privacy update requires requesting users’ permission to track their activity across apps for personalized advertising purposes. Google’s plans to follow Apple’s move are as yet unconfirmed, but Apple’s new privacy protection is a direct hit on Facebook’s bottom line.
At a speech at Brussels’ data privacy conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook obliquely referred to Facebook by saying: “If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”
Today, information about you is collected on apps you use or websites you visit. This data is combined with additional data collected by companies other than the one owning that app or website. Data brokers routinely sell aggregated data you never knew was collected and which you certainly never agreed to share.
Whether owned or controlled by Internet giants such as Facebook or Alphabet or not, data brokers benefit from the still unclear regulations around the use of metadata and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI).
The lack of transparency around data collection and its use is what Facebook and others built their massive fortune on. They leveraged this formidable amount of data to increase the time users spend on their platform and consume paid ads, all the while collecting yet more data. The catastrophic results of this misuse of people’s data to drive profit range from society’s polarization and fake news proliferation to social media addiction.
Apple’s ongoing new privacy control rollout directly affects Facebook ad products as it limits its ability to serve highly targeted ads.
In January 2020, Google already announced its intention to stop supporting third-party tracking cookies within two years. That move will affect the entire online ad ecosystem.
Regulators also woke up. GDPR regulations are now being complemented by the Digital Markets and the Digital Services Acts that further target gatekeepers with excessive power.
In short, the paid ads bubble is starting to burst!
The Blockchain Marketing Alternative
As the current digital marketing model, based on stealthily obtained data and driven by a few companies’ unmitigated greed, is heading for its downfall, the migration of digital marketing to blockchain might happen fast.
2key is a pioneer in blockchain marketing driven by an ideal of fair redistribution of wealth, transparency, and accountability.
In stark contrast with today’s mega corporations, which monetize users’ online time and rely on soulless algorithms to maximize benefits, 2key redistributes 90% of its network’s revenue to its users. That is 2key’s way to thank people who invest time and effort to share links. 2key’s entire revenue generation and distribution model is transparently displayed, and all users who hold some 2KEY tokens are invited to the quarterly board meetings.
Instead of “being the product,” as is currently the case for existing platforms’ users, all 2key users are the platform’s partners.
Advertisers using SmartLinks benefit from a slew of advantages over the current digital marketing models:
- Direct access to the power of human connections: SmartLinks:
- Eliminate the need for integration to run referral campaigns
- Enable multi-layered referrals, exponentially increasing referral campaign impact.
- Incentivized virality: Every member of a referral chain leading to a conversion receives a share of the conversion budget, increasing referrers incentive to share the SmartLink as they :
- Benefit from the referral activity downstream.
- Help the friend who sent the link earn as well.
- Build higher customer loyalty — Advertisers’ customers
- Appreciate the company’s recognition of their efforts in sharing their message or product or services and
- Are more likely to come back and see if there are more opportunities to earn a residual income for spreading the company’s links.
- Full control on the Cost per Click: PPC SmartLink creators decide unilaterally the actual price each click will cost, without any interference from complex and opaque algorithms managing ad bidding. Added bonus, it takes virtually no time to do so 😀
- Blockchain enhanced ad fraud protection: SmartLinks’ anti-ad-fraud system leverages both Machine Learning and AI technology, and the unique checks and filters specific to Ethereum Plasma and smart-contract.
- Built-in anti-spam system: leveraging reputation mining, 2key Qi points system rewards or penalizes SmartLink referrers for sharing SmartLinks with people.
- Set and forget: once the SmartLink is deployed and shared by the SmartLink creator with its core audience, the system manages everything, from recording the entire SmartLink traffic map and conversion to calculating and distributing payment to every single person involved in generating a conversion. No need to manage complex affiliate programs.
- No need for complex keywords-based campaigns: today’s ad strategy relies on algorithms serving ads based on keywords. Even if the actual targeting relies on Machine Learning’s understanding of the users’ theoretical buying intentions, the price paid is typically keyword-based. SmartLinks are directly shared by people with people, based on their human connections. Each referrer evaluates the value of sharing the SmartLink, saving the SmartLink creator the time and effort involved in selecting the most cost-effective keywords.
- Measurable results: detailed, readable at a glance granular analytics in addition to Google Analytics.
- Future-Proof Data Privacy Compliant: as data collection is kept to the strict minimum required to open an account, no nasty surprises requiring a sudden redefinition of the digital marketing strategy following the adoption of a new set of regulations.
Forbes estimates that the Apple vs. Facebook privacy war is only one of the elements heralding the end of the current typical digital marketing strategy. Their recommendation is to pivot online marketing efforts to include collecting compliant first-party data solutions.
Why not also add the numerous built-in advantages of blockchain marketing solutions?
