How Big Tech Anti-Trust Regulation Can Change Marketing

How Big Tech Anti-Trust Regulation Can Change Marketing. 

Big tech companies are stronger today then they have ever been. The past 20 years has seen the rise of the internet economy and clear winners such as Google, Apple, Amazon & Facebook have emerged. While there is no question these companies have created tremendous economic opportunity, concern abounds that they might be too big. Specific claims include that Google and Facebook has monopoly power and that Apple & Amazon have sustained competitive advantages and strong market power. The risk these companies pose is the ability to block competition, thus limiting development of new ventures and potentially using monopoly power to adversely effect consumers. There are lots of economic and regulatory issues to be worked out but I would like to pose one specific scenario and how it would effect marketing. 

A Shift In Data Property Rights   

One of the potential regulatory responses to the power of big tech is shifting the property rights of data to the consumers. Today these rights are held with the companies and consumers give permission to these firms to collect the data. Shifting the property rights of this data to the consumer could attach a monetary value to personal data that a consumer could then sell back to a firm that would like to use it for marketing and performance. From a regulatory standpoint, this would allow new entrants to enter a market by large data purchases. What this could mean for marketers is twofold. The first is that companies will have very different data set for different customers. CAC would vary tremendously between customers based on the data they provide and that would alter the effectiveness of an ad delivery. Second, this would limit their ability to initially estimate your return for a campaign and then deliver a consistent campaign. The data would not be as consistent, would be more expensive and thus would greatly increase the costs of a campaign.

A final note is that with change, opportunity follows. A new frontier provides new opportunities to differentiate marketing campaigns and new  industries to form such as consumer data exchanges.