To be Tracked or Forgotten: The Impact of Jan 1 with CPRA

To be Tracked or Forgotten: The Impact of Jan 1 with CPRA

This January saw the first steps in the most current US battle between digital advertisers and US privacy advocates when it comes to cross-site tracking (known as behavioral advertising). This activity occurs when a consumer watches a knitting video on youtube and then is fed a “wobbles” knitting sponsored post on Instagram. This differs from contextual advertising which learns from a consumer's past actions on a single platform. IE when you watch knitting reels and then are fed sponsored posts for yarn releases or knitting patterns on Instagram. 

January 1, 2023 saw the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) implementation. This new privacy act allows consumers to opt out of cross-contextual behavioral advertising.  Privacy experts are applauding this step forward for US data protection as a “catch-up” to EU regulation. However, some critics believe that the consumer requirement to opt-out for each website will create user fatigue similar to EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) IE how an individual just starts accepting most cookies in order to gain access to the website regardless of what information these cookies are gathering. Some US critics believe the policy should be an Opt-In to better facilitate protection for the consumer. However, this critique is opposed by the digital advertisers that utilize this data as the consumer’s data is what is used to pay for the “free and open” internet. 2023 will be an interesting year as digital marketing adapts to these infantile privacy laws as the true impact will not be known for a few more months.