Consumer Consent Is Irrelevant Without Enforcement

Consumer data is more lucrative — and protected — than ever before.

Several consumer protection laws govern how digital marketers interact with user data, from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Most recently, the U.S. federal government is poised to consider the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), which would codify protections similar to GDPR for U.S. consumers.

The sweeping popularity of consumer data protection signals a few things. One, consumer data remains incredibly valuable. Customer data enables marketers and advertisers to offer tailored suggestions and products to motivated buyers. Otherwise, laws surrounding consumer privacy wouldn’t be necessary.

Secondly, existing laws governing privacy protections are not far-reaching enough to stop corporations from misusing consumer data — unwittingly or not. Unfortunately, headlines about violated consumer consent are familiar. This is partially the case because third-party data sharing — which remains prevalent — often leads to abuses of consumer consent preferences.

Marketers and advertisers must address the challenges associated with third-party data sharing head-on if they want to comply with emerging regulations. They’ll need to get serious about lessening the reliance on third-parties and enforcing consumer consent at the moment of collection.

Collecting consent is no longer enough

Organizations must collect consent preferences upfront, either implicitly or explicitly. For example, the GDPR dictates that consumer consent must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.” Meanwhile, the CCPA follows an implicit consent model that allows comparably passive means to collect consumer consent (i.e., cookie opt-out banners).

However, consent collection isn’t enough to protect consumer data. Customer consent requires ongoing management and re-validation, especially as data use evolves or new processing purposes emerge. In reality, marketers must enforce their consumers’ consent across the lifecycle of their data.

When a webpage collects a consumer’s consent preferences, that information should become inextricably tied to the customer’s unique and anonymized user ID. Anonymous but unique user IDs enable marketers and advertisers to maintain an understanding of individual consumer behavior without violating an individual’s privacy.

Developers can enforce consent anonymously across a large ecosystem of websites by employing cross-domain tracking and server-side tagging. Cross-domain tracking is beneficial for retailers operating multiple subsidiary websites — for instance, Dick’s Sporting Goods. In this example, cross-domain tracking ensures that Dick’s Sporting Goods user preferences, including consent and previous purchase history, are carried over to family websites like Golf Galaxy. As a result, Golf Galaxy can respect a consumer’s consent preferences while simultaneously creating an ultra-personalized journey that encourages sales.

The binding of a consumer with their consent preferences represents consent enforcement. By enforcing consent, marketers ensure customer data remains compliant and consensual even as it passes from first-party to third-party hands (metaphorically speaking).

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What does consent enforcement accomplish?

Consent enforcement is critical to maintaining consumer trust and keeping pace with emerging regulations. Companies that effectively enforce consumer consent enjoy the following benefits:

• Enhanced consumer trust. Consumers are overwhelmingly suspicious about retailers and how they employ customer data. Eight in ten customers are concerned about how companies use their data, and 67% don’t understand how customer data is used at all. Frequent headlines about data breaches and violated privacy likely exacerbate these negative feelings.Consumer trust is precious. Businesses should not only enforce consent but tell users about the other proactive measures they’re taking to protect consumer data. Moreover, they should inform their digital consumers how data will (and won’t) be used. Transparency in data practices improves customer trust, which is directly related to better sales outcomes.
• Compliance with legal standards. Enforcing consent isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a legal necessity. Non-compliance results in severe penalties, including fines and reputational damage. For example, in April 2024, Google settled a consumer privacy lawsuit for misleading disclosures about privacy protections enjoyed while browsing in “incognito” mode. The courts ordered Google to delete all incognito user data, and the organization is now faced with the potential of hundreds of individual consumer lawsuits (of which over 50 have already been filed). Charges of this caliber are devastating for many organizations.  Consent enforcement improves compliance outcomes by ensuring consumer preferences aren’t violated, even when data is passed to a third party. Consent enforcement protocols bind a customer’s consent to their data token, ensuring that consent preferences never get lost in the shuffle.
• A more ethical approach to data. The ethics of data collection and consent enforcement are tied up in compliance regulations. (In other words, the “ethical” thing to do is often also the compliant thing to do.) However, marketers still have a duty to protect their customers’ data, especially when it constitutes personally identifiable information (PII). Enforcing consent protects PII by ensuring this information is handled delicately and in line with a consumer’s expectations. In the long term, unethical consent practices will deeply damage an organization’s reputation. This irreparable damage is often more dangerous to business continuity than individual fines.

Consumer data drives personalization campaigns, improves marketing outcomes, and improves user experience (UX) overall. Marketers cannot neglect consumer data collection. However, they must wield data carefully — and taking care begins with consent enforcement.

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