The e-commerce world is terrified of something called CCPA which stands for California Consumer Privacy Act which is a law that took effect just weeks ago and could seriously alter the future of how consumer goods are sold online.
The freak-out is real, but like all things the future will be defined by those who can adapt.
California politicians passed the CCPA to give consumers more control over their own personal information businesses can collect about them. The biggest way this impacts e-comm is it makes it far more difficult for Facebook, Google, Amazon (a.k.a the triopoly) and others to gather information about people. Unlike previous laws, the CCPA is an opt out program which put the responsibility on the advertiser to eliminate data if consumers choose that option.
Truly, this is just the beginning of 3rd party cookies disappearing, which will make data collection by the triopoly that much more difficult. Facebook may be forced to change its tracking in California, a huge market, and states like New York, Texas and Florida will not be fare behind. Those are the nation’s four biggest markets.
The CCPA won’t allow for feedback, conversion numbers and more (at least in the first round of a campaign) and it is hard to tell clients that the low conversion rate is no fault of the media buyers.
So…what’s an ecomm company to do?
Reality of Tracking
So, the law does not apply to all businesses equally, pertaining only to those with gross annual revenue over $25 million, those that have more than 50,000 users’ worth of personal info, or those earning greater than half of annual revenue from selling consumer data.
Facebook has responded by refusing to change their behavior, putting the responsibility solely on the advertisers (translation – ecomm pros). Now, surely there will be a class action lawsuit that will change this policy, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Google and Amazon have both adopted paths that try to play along with the law but still use data as much as possible.
Essentially, we are seeing chaos, but not necessarily chaos for a reason. 2020 has been a year filled with fear-based reactions and while CCPA and related laws will force us to pivot, we are still the only game in town for steady direct to consumer (DTC) sales. States and cities throughout the country are shutting down again due to the pandemic, and retailers are having to close up shop once again.
Even with these new rules, brands have to use ecomm to get their goods to market.
Snap, TikTok and Native
Brands will pivot, e-commerce pros know that to be true. Brands will start to shift to Snapchat, TikTok and even native advertising instead of going the current Facebook route. Tiktok of course has its own problems because the federal government may shut it down completely.
There are no limits to how e-commerce companies can use this as an opportunity. Remember, the Facebook campaigns of today did not exist 8 years ago. What we are doing now was invented by…us. Ecomm companies that want to rewrite the rules to create new amazing conversion rates for brands will define the future, but we already knew that.
The biggest skill we can have right now is courage. Not to sound like Braveheart, but the people, companies, governments and organizations that are in the biggest crisis are those reacting out of fear. CCPA will have a serious impact, but my team will learn, adjust and continue to show amazing value to our client brands. That’s not a guess, it’s what is going to happen.
The agencies that want to survive need to learn how to learn, and how to learn fast because the changes will come quickly. Consumer buying trends will adjust, the dollars they have to spend will adjust and data privacy rules will probably change 10 more times by 2030. Change is the only constant, and e-commerce agencies will thrive if they brace themselves for this reality.
