Carla speaks to Kate Crowley – Agency Head of Google Marketing Platform about GDPR, ePrivacy and the impact this legislation has on companies and designers.
Transcript
The Design Untangled Podcast
Episode: DU027 – GDPR and ePrivacy
Host: Carla Lindarte
Guest: Kate Crowley, Agency Head, Google Marketing Platform
(00:18)Kate: Hi Carla. Thank you for having me.
(00:20)Carla: Oh, finally, this is like the fifth time, right? That we’ve tried to, record this?
(00:24)Kate: Things kept getting in the way, me, trades, everything.
(00:28)Carla: Me.
(00:29)Kate: Were to blame for at least one of them, but most of them were on me.
(00:32)Carla: Yeah. So thank you so much for being here. So today we are going to be talking about a very, very exciting topic. GDPR and privacy or I do not know if it is the same thing or different, but that is why we have Kate here. So Kate is from Google. She is actually a colleague of mine. We work really close together. But I am going to ask you, Kate, introduce yourself and just to tell our listeners who you are. Who are you, Kate?
01:00 Kate: Sure. Who am I? Yeah. Good question. So I am Kate. I work in Google UK. My da-to-day job is looking after agencies, trying to preach the good word, that the Google marketing platform, usually called DoubleClick before I joined Google, in the three years I spent around ten years working in ad agencies. So I have gone from being the buyer to the seller, from the good to the bad. I am joking, Google is good.
01:29 Carla: Yeah. Google is really good. The food is amazing.
01:32 Kate: Yeah, the food is amazing.
01:33 Carla: So yeah, talking about GDPR and ePrivacy, is it the same thing? Or is it different?
01:45 Kate: There are different. So I was actually trying to get the street in my head yesterday during my research for this. So I pulled you till I get this a little bit wrong, but GDPR is a regulation as the name suggests. It is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Regulations are different to directors. I have a law degree. I started EU LAW about years ago. I cannot remember a word of it. I know the difference twelve years ago, but God help me now. So a regulation I believe is often left up to the interpretation of the member state. So, there are certain general rules about it, but for the most part, the state can have some input into how they want to interpret GDPR to an extent. Obviously, the EU will step in if they see people taking a little bit too seriously slash not seriously enough. Whereas the directive, ePrivacy is overarching. So there is no wiggle room. The directive is you do this, or we come down upon you very hard. So ePrivacy, actually when it comes. As far as I am aware, last January 2017, the EU came up with its first draft. And what happens with these laws, these regulations is there is many iterations. So the first one they really set, everyone goes, what is that? Absolutely not. And they get challenged all over the place and then they start to refine it. And so eventually emerges as some semi-formed thing like GDPR, whereas ePrivacy or the first draft came out, it was shat upon by all the member states, because it does some good things.
(03:23)Kate: I mean overall, both of these regulations and directives, are trying to do a good thing, but they are very heavy handed. So ePrivacy is seen by a lot of companies as the death toll for the cookie for example. The co-cookie thing. There is a part of GDPR, part of ePrivacy is actually a very small part, but it is what everyone focuses upon. Especially us, working in ad tech., GDPR has killed a lot of smaller companies who rely on the cookie. They see the way it is going as we say, they see the way the cookie is crumbling. Cookie puns. So it ePrivacy is probably going to pull the rug up the from a lot of companies who are very cookie reliant.
(04:11)Carla: So it is then different from a user perspective, I remember years ago, we started getting all this cookie messages and, and then say an accepting of that. And now we have different types of messages. Right now we have more like GDPR related. So what is the differences between the two?
(04:31)Kate: So one thing that is interesting about ePrivacy, so interesting, as it, in the very kind of it is the wrong word to use for ePrivacy because none of it is interesting. But the more interesting part of this very boring topic is that, so as you say, years ago a user would have to accept cookies or declined cookies for any purposes. Whereas ePrivacy does allow websites that use cookies, for what they call legitimate reasons not to have that disclaimer. The problem is what is a legitimate reason? So marketing in no one’s eyes, would ever count as a proper reason for having this cookie concern. But the problem is, that a lot of people who run websites, they rely on advertising to make money. Personalized advertising does generate more revenue because if someone knows that you are a man into extreme sports, who also loves green shoes, that ad will do much better than you receiving a potted plant ad. You have no interest in that at all. So it makes more money for the website because they see it as a more desirable sites. If when your average media person’s doing their report and they see, oh, Kate’s website is so personalized, they are making so many sales, let us put more budget into that website. That is like a proper reason to use personalized advertising, but advertising is the black sheep of the world. There are some companies.
(05:58)Carla: [inaudible 05:58] hates them.
(06:00)Kate: There is some companies that I am not going to name. One rhymes with shitty-o who have absolutely changed people’s perceptions of advertising because that is your old cliché of the shoe ad following you around to your eventually die. Until that death, you do see the pair of red shoes, and offers that you would never ended up buying. But that is not actually what advertising is about. When it is done well, you do not notice it. And that is the point. There is a lot of websites do it beautifully. A lot of publishers who do it beautifully, but there are some who have ruined it for the rest of us.
(06:30)Carla: I know and I mean to be honest, when I worked in UX and I did quite a lot of research on like people’s behaviors, people’s perceptions, about like ecommerce sites and like shopping, et cetera. People love personalization. They do not say, I love personalization. They say I love relevance, right? And you can achieve that. But once you talk to them about personalization as a concept, they’re like, oh, that’s creepy. And that’s advertising. They are just trying to sell to me. So it is kind of like this, people want more personalized experiences, but they are not really willing to actually provide more data.
(07:07)Kate: Yeah. It has a bad reputation. And I think what a lot of people do not know is that they see the standard as personalization. If it was less personalized, the data, like I have logged into a website, how do you not remember that? I have never been to your surfboard section. All I have ever done is go to your long board section. That is annoying, but they do not see that as personalization. But it all comes, this was two sides of the same coin. So cookies will allow when you log into our website to see that you had this in your basket and you previously browse this, that is a good experience. Yet, the ad side of things is seen as a bad experience and actually they’re so connected. And again, there are some websites or some companies rather who have made it very difficult to make this argument because it is seen as like, the people who call you up and they say, have you had an accident at work, that was not your fault. How did you get my data? Didn’t tick a box one time three years ago and you been sold to us by 50 different companies. That is the very negative side. There’s also the positive side, but the onus is on companies like Google, Facebook, any other big tech company or small tech company to create a good experience. Yeah. It is not the customer’s fault, they’ve had a bad experience. It is all the bad actors who piled into the ecosystem taking advantage of these lax laws. And yeah, coming in hard. And unfortunately it has made customers very weary and very wary of cookie related information.
08:38 Carla: And I think what we can see, is that people, if you ask people about, their data and whether or not they are willing to share data, they normally quite reluctant to it. Do you think that’s going to change, especially now with GDPR and everything happened to Facebook, problems and all these things. Do you think, it is going to get to a point, that people like basically, companies and advertisers are going to get, let get less data from consumers or you think it is just going to get better?
(09:11)Kate: So one of the things that we have been saying about GDPR to the market is that really, it is a good thing because it creates better data. It is not giving you on consented, maybe out of date crap information. It is actually highly relevant and it is people who want to be reached by you. The problem is though, is that the way GDPR has been interpreted by a lot of companies, it is a not to the regulation, but it is not in the spirit of it at all. GDPR at its core, is do not use someone’s data unless they give explicit consent, but your average person who, [inaudible 09:48] me, I am an average person, but I know more about this, than the average person. If I go on a website and there’s two options, there’s, it says, we use your cookies for some staff, find out more, or accept I am going to click accept, because I want to find that information straight away. I am not going to go to a separate site and be like, Ooh, yes, unclick Critio but I do love Google Analytics and no one really does that.
(10:11) Kate: There are some websites, I think the Daily Mirror, depending on who you spoke to, they were either praised or insulted for their GDPR approach, which was, if you say decline, then it gives you a whole list of all of the tags with the partner companies and you could just go through it on the tick or tick the ones that you want to have your data, but no one knows these companies. That is part of the problem is that you do not mind having Google Analytics with your data., maybe. You definitely you do not mind the website having your data, but then you see all of these exchanges, all these other people, like who the hell are these? That’s the problem. But because customers do not often see these, these lists, they just click accept because like I want to read the Guardian. I do not want to have to dick around with ticking boxes. Then actually the data is largely unaffected at the moment. What we’re waiting for is, for the EU to come down very hard on someone who is intentionally breaching it.
(11:05) Kate: And that’s one, other thing about GDPR is that if you are a small website owner and you do not really understand GDPR, but maybe a cookie consent banner on that’s enough, enough is showing that you are trying to stick with it. Companies like ourselves, like Google, like Facebook, Amazon, they’re not going to get away with that because we’re not some tiny one man band thinking, I think this is the law. We have hundreds of lawyers who’ve been investigating this, researching, searching this, but for years, like five years. So if we say, oh I did not know, that doesn’t work. So what everyone is waiting for, is for the EU eventually to say, to a big company what you did was unacceptable. Or to say, I know that this was seen as a bad thing, but actually we reviewed you and that was fine because no one knows what GDPR is at the moment.
(11:55)Carla: Yeah. Because even I remember when GDPR was happening which I think it was the time where we were planning to do this interview.
(12:01)Kate: Yes, it was relevant six months ago.
(12:05)Carla: There was these massive explication of people saying, Oh, I am going to start getting less ads or I am going to start getting less spammy emails. But really things haven’t changed. I actually thought it was the opposite. Lots of emails are asking, different companies are asking…
(12:22)Kate: Please let me stay on your mailing list. I think it was Space and K, I think they bribed people to stay on their mailing list. You have got five pound voucher. I [inaudible 12:31] address. And it did for a little while, have an effect. So I get a lot of calls from numbers that I do not recognize. I do not answer them, because I do not recognize, you want to speak to me, you leave a voicemail. What I’ll do is I’ll then Google the number and it would say something like, oh, like ww.whocalledme.com and it will have like harassment rates. And for awhile I was getting loaded, these calls from PPI companies, have you had an accident at work that wasn’t your fault, these ones. But then they stopped after GDPR. And they have come back with a vengeance. I think because the regulations are seen as not having as much teeth, as they might otherwise have, because there had been a high profile case of someone really, really messing up in.
(13:15)Kate: There are so many good things that came out of GDPR so that you have to appoint a DPO for example, a Data Protection Officer (DPR) if you are in a company above a certain size. And I think actually, correct me if I am wrong, but you should have had one before GDPR. It was a good idea. It wasn’t enforced, where GDPR said if you have to, and then these companies started having conversations that really we should have been having years ago. And the problem we then had was everyone had their own opinion. So Google had its own framework, I am sure Facebook, Amazon, other tech companies did. Buy AB got involved with their framework that came up quite late. Not to get all the shit on them, but we then have to make certain changes towards our approach because obviously we want to go with what’s best for the customer, but every market interpret differently as well.
(14:07)Kate: There’s no, I think the idea was that the DPO is within the UK, within Germany, within France, Belgium, whatever. They had to agree. But our approach to it could be completely different to the Spanish one. And that’s the point, is that say, regulation not a directive. So there is an element of interpretation. The company, the country has to come together with its interpretation. But I do not mean I have only experienced the UK’s approach to GDPR, there’s been a bit rubbish because I mean everyone’s waiting for the big fall guy and I am unfortunately it is going to be, Google, was going to be favorable Facebook, and they have their own problems that moment of course. And so are we. But then they did lose a claims-made as well. There was that a common book, the name of the guy. But these people who they are waiting for GDPR to become law and then they instantly submitted all of their. Google Android phones are collecting the wrong kind of data. Facebook didn’t have these kinds of things in place that should have, they’re just waiting, but there was a huge load of noise about, in the media about that. But then again, you hear nothing. And whether it is because the EU collects them and going through them and they, maybe they got that best minds on it or it could just be that it is fallen flat. And again, until that person is dragged over the coals and like strung up in the town center, we’re not going to not going to see and impact to GDPR. I pray to God, it is not Google, but it is very likely to be us, or one of the other tech giants unfortunately.
(15:37)Carla: So that’s interesting, isn’t it? Because you know, as you mentioned before, the person or the people like building a website, or they are on a small website and just like trying their best to be compliant. Are they actually going to see any impact? Or if they do, what is the impact? or you think that’s going to be more on the big players?
(15:59)Kate: So I think the big players are bigger targets. They’re softer targets as well. Everyone was like, they know that every big company has done something that has treaded the line or but even crossed the line of being non-privacy safe. A small company I do not think, or small website owner, little to be concerned about with GDPR at the moment. You take some very angry customer to report a small shop place for a breach of what they see as a breach of their privacy. But ePrivacy goes much further. So ePrivacy is seen as the death of the cookie. You’ve got the likes of Safari, Firefox as well. And announcing their intent, well, Safari already has, they’ve made it so third party cookies are instantly rejected. So if you are naughty, a first party cookie dropper, you get no information from a user who is working their way around Safari. I think 30% of the UK, anyway, use Safari. I have an iPhone I use, I went to iOS 11, shouldn’t have done, I should have like, no, no cookies tonight. But I did, and Firefox have also announced that they are willing to do that. I am sure others are going to follow suit that makes it difficult. If we’re trying to make money off… See I am a content creator. I have a very popular blog and a wishful thinking and then I rely on advertising to support my website. If someone cannot track a sale made from an ad on my websites, I am not getting paid or I am not seeing it as a desirable site.
(17:34)Kate: That is where the impact happens. So if you cannot drop cookies, it is very difficult to prove, as a small guy that you are worth investing in. Google and Facebook both have their logged in users. We this huge footprint but doesn’t rely on the cookies, it is logged in user. The advantages there for the small players you’ve already seen. A lot of companies unfortunately go under, I say unfortunately, some of them deserve to go under, but a lot of them we’re trying to do just try and make advertising better for the consumer, but because they relied so much upon a third party cookies or there’s no way in hell the customer would ever consent to it given this company that data, because they never heard of them. Working in media, we’ve heard of them, but your average person is like, who the hell is this person? Why do they want my data?
(18:20)Kate: They see it is very difficult to say, well, this company, what they’ll do is they’ll do analytics and they create a nice report and they send it to a media agency and then they know whether to invest in that site or not. That doesn’t resonate with your average person or any person, any sensible person,
(18:35)Carla: Would understand that.
(18:38) Kate: It is such a confusing area, even we work in it, it is so confusing.
(18:43)Carla: I am still confused.
18:43 Kate: This is the lumascape that has hundreds of hundreds of these companies that no one knows what they do. There was somewhat some obvious names in there, Google, Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. But most of them that hugely important to some parts of the ecosystem, but they’re the ones who’ve lost out because it is hard for them to prove their value and to get consent or they’re, having said that, it is easier for them now because as I said, a lot of websites are giving a nod towards consent, but they’re not actually given the customer choice because it is either accept or if you decline, you have to go into this other like dark world where they say, all right, what about this publisher? What about this exchange? What’d you think about them? And no one wants to go say, go through a long list and be like, yes, that one. No, that one is, yeah.
(19:24)Carla: So basically when you do, when you accept, you are not really, you are not very informed about why you actually accepting?
(19:32)Kate: One sentence saying, do you consent to cookies? Yes or no? And the no, who takes you into this like hell of like, I do not understand what these words mean. And the is a massive green button declines, kind of a dark gray. It is, there’s, as I say, its efforts had been made towards the GDPR, but I do not think that the spirit of it has been accepted by that many publishers or websites. And then some have gone so far, I think it was an NPR’s website where they said if you declined, you could basically get a plain text version of their website. And that is absolutely against the regulations. Actually. It says you cannot penalize people who do not want to opt into marketing of course. But then, accepting cookies that then pass data to the small third-parties. It is very different from someone hounding you on the phone constantly calling you, all hours of the day. And thank God I haven’t got a landline because I’d be absolutely ruined. I have had years ago, I just put my website in once I have got to tick the box. But then there’s some very, very nice things about GDPR. Like so the now the default is I do not consent. You have to tick a box.
(20:40)Carla: You have as actually consciously consent.
(20:42)Kate: So there were some things, I mean, GDPR is a long time coming is only in the EU, but I mean, America had been thinking about it as well. Yeah. They have the same issues that we do. And of course if you are a company operating in America, but with European customers, you have to understand GDPR, be aware of it, because if you have a presence in Europe, does not matter that your based in America, the EU can still come down on you. But the US government is still is seeing GDPR and any privacy, hopefully learning from the good parts of it and avoid the bad parts of it, but it is needed. It needs to be regulated, because you have all these bad players in the market, but it also requires everyone. So actually everyone being the big tech companies, the publishers, et cetera, to understand that this needs to happen and lean into it rather than just doing the bare minimum and hoping that someone else gets the blame.
(21:36)Carla: Someone else gets the fine. The fine is?
(21:38)Kate: Oh, it is big. Is it 10% of revenue not profits? The year you will be having some shiny new offices if one of them comes in.
(21:47)Carla: Do you think that would change with Brexit, though?
(21:49)Kate: Oh, so once Brexit comes in, I am sure, I will go straight back to having all these blocks. Again, these calls have come back, but I am sure that like 15 calls a day from people saying, you have a road accident? Yeah, I do not imagine that anyone in the UK is following GDPR or obeying it because they love the principle. It is more because, you know, the EU says we have to. The big bad EU. I imagine that if Brexit happens that there will be a mass exodus away from cookie concern and we’ll go back to the wild west that it used to be. And there’s no real benefit to a company, even a company like Google to follow GDPR apart from the fact that it is right for the customer, which is why Google’s Lenten so heavily in rip and very hot on privacy and data consent.
(22:38)Kate: But if you just take from a marketing point of view, it is awful, but then that’s not the full story. The story should be marketing view as this, but as a consumer, what do I want? I mean I fully support GDPR as a consumer. Yeah. It is annoying that I might have less cookies and my audience pool, but it is still not enough to make me think that GDPR is a bad thing.
(23:00)Carla: Yeah, exactly, because it is all about the user experience as well, isn’t it? And then the thing we should all be committed to, especially.
(23:07)Kate: If you want to create a sustainable business, you do not want to alienate your customers. And I think we have all had experiences where an ad as annoyed you so much that you have then made a conscious decision never to shop with them again. So is that an ideal? Absolutely not. Leave out retail website, any websites and I see them everywhere. In fact, some of my clients and my agency clients, I visit their website and they target me with ads. It makes me hate them a little bit.
(23:32)Carla: I know, but it has improved a lot, I have to say from like three or four years ago. I remember like just looking at something on website x and then that ad followed me everywhere I went. Yep. Which is now I learned like that there’s some something called frequency cap.
(23:53)Kate: It would be lovely if we used them.
(23:54)Carla: Which means that you cannot really bombard your users as many times as possible. But even after you have purchased something, they still, I remember they still used to push you with the same products.I have already bought it, just leave me alone.
(24:09)Kate: That is the only thing, if we use this technology in a really crude and often, ill thought out ways, so if I bought a pair of shoes, do not send me the same pair of shoes, like sell me a pair of trousers that look good with those. Sell me some leather protector.
(24:21)Carla: Yeah, exactly.
(24:22)Kate: Make it worthwhile. I was actually talking to my boss about this the other day. We are both absolute suckers for highly targeted Instagram ads. I have got a kid, you are like, oh, a beach towel that repels sand. That speaks to me. Not, oh you are a women age 18 to 35, so here’s a pregnancy test. Is that what we want? That’s the crude advertising. To fairs, P&G who have those clear blue ads. It has worked extremely well for them. But I find that much less appealing than a personalized ad. But people have used personalization so poorly that we have ended up with the world, hated them, when actually done well, you do not even notice it.
(25:03)Carla: Exactly. But that’s the whole point of it, isn’t it? Yeah. But then there is, I mean everyone talks about personalization and we have been talking about personalization for years, I would say. But no one is really doing it right. I do not say, and not with personalization. Now, there is a still a lot of work to do to get there. However, if people, like there is a kind of this weird are balanced between personalization and creepyness, right? When they actually even know so much about you that you know, oh my God, I actually am trying to get pregnant and you know, all of this. I mean, it is really creepy, isn’t it?
(25:38)Kate: Oh, there’s some sensitivity as well. So I was reading an article about a lady who tragically lost her baby and she was getting hounded by ads thinking, oh now, your baby must be one month old. Here’s and ad appeals to you. There is really a bad side of it. But there’s also, as you say, that’s not personalization as well, that is very crude. You are woman age between certain parts, you must want a baby. Maybe not. There are signals with Google’s all about, or I am showing signals that I am researching things. I mean, if I am researching a crib a cot, I am probably going to have a baby. That’s a safe bet. But the fact that because I am a person of a certain age, I used to, I used to love it when I worked at my last job, which was Dentsu Aegis where because at work on my work computer, all I do is look at my clients’ websites and that at the time I had Santander and General Motors. Then Google thought I was a man. So I would get, like again, ignore the ads. They could be like, oh, try think of manly ads about being hugely sexist, it, it would be posting things I had an interest in often, it would be cars and finance.
(26:40)Kate: But their my clients, that was not my hobby. And so that was nice because it was so anti-me. But what it means is that, if I visiting a website that I am seen as like a female website, let’s say Vogue, for example, they’re going to know or assume correctly that I am a woman. But then I am going to get targeted with ads that are not relevant to me. And even the personalization that Vogue plays on now, is probably irrelevant to me.
I do say a true personalization experience is very different and it is very hard for me to even think of any examples of when we have seen this. We talk about it all the time and this absolutely ideal world where it would be an ad where they know that you have been on holiday to four different destinations and here’s a fifth one that you have never thought of. It would be perfect for you.
(27:23)Kate: Here is the package or laid out one click and you can buy it. That is the dream. The reality is you are going to be shown the same crappy New York crowds you’ve been seeing for five years. It is very difficult to get because it is working as well. Unfortunately, it is well working in inverted commas. Companies see it as successful because they are generating sales off of it. But if they could truly embrace personalization, then.
(27:45)Carla: You think it is a technical restriction, is because the tech is not there yet just because of the business processes inside their organization?
(27:53)Kate: I think it is a bit of both. Yeah, the tech infrastructure at the moment, does not support that personalization utopia, but also I think there is a lack of interest. We have been like a reason to care, within the company because as I say, things have gone well, so [inaudible 28:10] and what shittier is, I call them all, I should name them. I should’ve just called them shittier again., They are hugely accessible because clients see them as successful. What they would do. I mean they have been accused of cookie bombing, where they basically just like everyone’s got a critio cookie in their browser, whether they know it or not. So sales that are made completely unconnected to them have been actually booted back to critio. And that’s the problem is that because senior execs and companies and advertisers see this, but like why would we change the model? And when it is working so well? They care less about the user experience, because customers do not know what good looks like.
(28:44)Kate: They do not know what to ask for. I say ask for, not with their words, but with their actions. So if people keep responding to these shit ads or if companies keep this cookie bombing people’s browsers. So even though I might never even seen your ad, it was called viewability, might be way below the fold. If that cookie is on my browser, I then find this company by chance. Then this crappy ad gets the credit, when actually it was completely unrelated. The attribution’s going some way to helping you think tools like Google or Lasix or Davey, and the like. They do help people make more informed studies of what’s happening. But that’s still quite a small part of the company. The nerds, the data scientists, they’re going, actually, I know you think this works, but the lifetime value of this customer is very low compared to ones who had this personalized experience, but because it was going for the low hanging fruit that the data scientist has put back into this little nerd box and they carry on talking about the things that have worked forever. And it is very difficult to say what will create change.
(29:49)Kate: Hopefully ePrivacy. And I felt bad saying that as well, because ePrivacy worked very well for companies like Google. Companies like Facebook because we have this footprint of logged in users. People want to share data with us because they see values in it. There’s a lot of the big players who do a fantastic job are going to be hit very hard by, they’ve been hit hard by GDPR, but ePrivacy can probably wipe out even more companies. But until someone shows what good is, then again, why would anyone care about, they thought these companies are being wiped out. They do not see the value in them. Now actually there is a huge amount of value if you think deep. But as I say, your average person has no need to do. They should be expected to understand how the ad infrastructure and ecosystem works. So it is a terrick and confusing that it is no wonder that people would rather click decline and not have to go through that list.
(30:38)Carla: So when is ePrivacy happening?
(30:40)Kate: God knows. So yeah, it has gone through many, many drafts. Think GDPR is quite late as well, because I mean, EU gets its critics, of course, ah, ha, Brexit. But they do listen to criticism and then a lot of feedback is provided and also taken into consideration. So, I do not know. I mean at first it was played differently to this year, but that seems hugely unlikely. So I am probably in one of those things where six months where it happens, every company in the world, like shit, just slightly GDPR as well. It is been in the works for years, like five years I think. And then the last like week before some companies were like, so I have to do something I do not understand.
31:19 And that’s when the lawyers started to make the money. And the joke is, the only people who benefit for GDPR, all the lawyers. The customer does not benefit, and the advertisers certainly do not benefit. But I think the ePrivacy is more of the same.
(31:32)Carla: Hopefully the users will benefit from it.
(31:34)Kate: Well yeah, but you think that about GDPR as well. I for one, not get these fucking phone calls, like constantly get, well here they are again. They know that they kind of hid behind a rock and they saw that they were safe again. So they’ve emerged these snakes, to ruin my phone experience.
(31:49)Carla: Yeah. All right, well thank you so much. That was, I think it was really insightful and useful. I am actually, I am askinga last question, and it is okay if you do not want to answer it or kind of answer it. But is there any, because a lot of our listeners are designers or creative, so UX designers like building products at the moment. Is there anything, any considerations that these guys need to have to save guard user data? So what recommendations would you give them when they are doing their jobs? From, the understanding of the user, going through their design process, launching a product, through to the advertising. So what kind of recommendations you give them to them to be alert and say, this is actually not right?
(32:37)Kate: I think it is cliched, but have the user in mind when you design. So think to yourself, okay. Right, so I need user data for this. Why? For them or for you? And if it is for you, what benefits that get back to the user. If you are collecting data, because, oh, it allows me to sell more stuff, that is not for the user. That is for you. If it is because, it allows you to provide the user with a better experience, and hopefully to connect them with products that will be a benefit to them. That is easier. So just have in mind that the interest of the consumer, the user should be at the heart. And it is an obvious thing to say, but really that is why marketing companies have been hit hard by this, because you have no reason to collect data beyond your own interest. And when you dig deep and you admit that to yourself, then you are going to have a better user experience, and you are not collecting data for the sake of it. You are collecting it to genuinely make the world a better place.
(33:35)Carla: Oh, that was an amazing phrase. [inaudible 33:35] Okay. Thank you so much again and I am definitely going to book another interview with you after ePrivacy.
(33:47)Kate: It might take six months to get in the diary, but we will do. (33:49)Carla: Yes, it probably be in like two years, or something, but that is okay.
(33:54)Kate: We will pencil it in.
(33:54)Carla: Okay. Thank you.
(33:54)Kate: Thanks Carla.
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