Sweeping regulations like California's upcoming privacy bill threaten to wipe out the advertising industry. These 10 tech companies are trying to help marketers survive.
- As regulation and privacy laws start to take shape, marketers are turning to advertising and marketing companies to help them prepare.
- These companies are selling marketers software and other tools that help collect, store, and use first-party data.
- Business Insider asked advertising agencies and investors to identify the leading companies helping marketers navigate the new privacy landscape.
- The 10 we list include startups, established security companies, and data firms belonging to major holding companies.
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Regulators are starting to rattle the advertising industry.
A year after the European Union rolled out the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR - the sweeping law that regulates how marketers collect and use people's data - similar rules are coming to the United States.
The California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, is set to roll out in January, and similar proposed laws in Nevada, New York, and Washington state would clamp down on how marketers use people's data, particularly third-party data sources.
The proposed laws would require marketers to collect consumers' consent to use their data for marketing and advertising, and encourage marketers to beef up their first-party data from email, loyalty programs, and transactions.
Digital giants Facebook and Google also are facing increasing regulatory scrutiny and cracking down on advertisers' ability to use third parties on their platforms. Facebook is rolling out a tool called "off-Facebook activity" that lets consumers wipe data that Facebook collects from other websites for ad targeting.
Google plans to introduce new privacy tools that limit how advertisers use third-party data within its Chrome browser. And Apple is pitching its new "Sign in With Apple" tool as a privacy-friendly tool that would severely limit how advertisers retarget people with ads on its devices.
Startups are capitalizing on marketers' need to prepare for coming privacy regulations. Scores of advertising and marketing technology firms say they are regulation-proof and pitching marketers on software and services that promise to keep them safe too.
"Marketers are woefully under-prepared - many have taken a laissez-faire attitude towards privacy," said Ben Barokas, CEO of ad-tech firm Sourcepoint, which provides software for digital publishers to collect first-party data.
The catch is that tech firms are hesitant to take on too much legal responsibility, Jason Koye, VP and general counsel of North America and global privacy lead at Omnicom Media Group, added.
"The tools might be compliant, but no responsible vendor is saying, 'By virtue of using our tool, you will be compliant,'" he said. "What these regulations have done is create legal risk allocation that's constantly evolving where everyone is trying to push liability onto someone else."
For that reason, he said agencies need to be conservative about the number of vendors they work with.
Business Insider asked a handful of advertising agencies and investors which companies marketers are working with. They named startups like Zeotap, Perksy, and mParticle that help marketers organize and use first-party data for marketing and advertising, along with established firms like TrustArc, which specializes in security technology.
Below are 10 companies, listed alphabetically, that are helping marketers prepare for the new wave of privacy and regulation. We listed companies' financial information depending on their stage of development. For startups, we indicated how much funding they've received to date; for public companies, we tracked their revenue; and for acquired companies, we listed their sale price.