Updated, December 07, 2023
Customer data privacy should never be compromised. Not even when dealing with anonymous shoppers in-store
Establishing trust with customers should be a top priority for all marketers, advertisers, and media owners, especially given the level of mistrust people have developed for companies and their customer data privacy usage and policies.
A study by the Pew Research Center showed that 79% of people said they were concerned with how companies use collected data, while 59% said they have very little understanding of how companies use data in the first place.
At Advertima, we believe audience-centric relevance and shopper targeting do not have to compromise individual customer data privacy or data regulations. That’s why we take security, transparency, and compliance very seriously.
We spare no effort to be transparent about how our In-store Retail Media technology works in compliance with data privacy laws and best practices to protect customer data privacy.
5 Ways Advertima’s In-store Retail Media Technology Protects Customer Data Privacy
1. We don’t need or use personally identifiable information (PII)
Advertima’s technology does not identify individuals and cannot collect or store any personal customer data.
Our visual sensors capture pseudonymized, aggregated information about shoppers in front of the screen in real-time. These include attributes such as gender, age, group composition, the total time spent looking at specific content on a screen, total attention span, and the position and distance from an advertising screen.
This anonymous demographic metadata about in-store shoppers is used for analysis purposes (which is ultimately the aim of all data collection). The anonymized first-party data can only be analyzed in aggregated form. This means that even accidental identification of a person is technically simply impossible.
2. We don’t need or use facial recognition
Our technology is also unable, by design, to reconstruct an image of an individual’s face or collect any biometric data. Our technology uses facial detection – not facial. These terms mean different things but are often confused as being the same.
While facial recognition can see and identify an individual’s face clearly, facial detection cannot. Facial detection technology only and exclusively locates human faces within an image, but it does not assign them an identity based on their appearance.
3. Full transparency and disclosure to all stakeholders
Any retailer that uses our In-store Retail Media technology aims to put a sign outside their store and on the screen informing and educating customers that our technology is in use inside the store. On this sign, customers can access the website links to read precisely how our technology works and how shopper data is collected and used for advertising. The sign will also provide the customer with contact information for the person responsible for the data privacy of the Retailer for any further questions or clarifications.
4. A ‘no compromise’ data security commitment
Advertima’s technology uses the highest level of encryption. Our technology is hosted by a globally-leading cloud service provider. The secure platform implements responsible and sophisticated technical and physical controls designed to prevent unauthorized access and disclosure of any first-party customer data.
5. ‘Privacy by design’ as a core brand value
Our technology is governed by the strictest data protection laws in the world, developed within the framework of legal principles of the GDPR in the EU. We are committed to four principles that guarantee a sustainable and secure application of our technology:
- Transparency: Everyone can find out how our In-store Retail Media technology works
- Self-restriction: We only process minimal anonymized in-store shopper data
- Data security: Our systems are protected from unauthorized external access and designed to protect customer data
- Data separation: Our technology defines clear processes to process any shopper and first-party data
Going beyond compliance: establishing trust with an ISAE 3000 report
At Advertima, we don’t believe in doing just the bare minimum to establish trust with our customers. We understand your (our customers’) needs to comply with applicable data privacy laws worldwide, such as GDPR, CCPA, and Swiss FDPA.
Therefore, we offer the highest level of privacy assurance by being ISAE 3000 audited by a leading global professional services firm.
Therefore, we offer the highest level of privacy assurance by being ISAE 3000 audited by a leading global professional services firm.
An ISAE (International Standard on Assurance Engagements) 3000 is the assurance standard for compliance, sustainability, and outsourcing audits. An ISAE 3000 assurance attestation report must be performed by an independent auditor, subject to strict independence rules to ensure that the issuer of the attestation is providing a completely independent evaluation of the company. The report testifies to Advertima’s design and implementation of privacy processes and the operating effectiveness of the controls in these processes.
The benefits of customer data privacy assurance reports like ISAE 3000 include:
- Indicating Advertima’s compliance with privacy regulators and other external stakeholders
- Showing that Advertima has implemented processes to protect personal data
- Demonstrating that Advertima executes procedures to limit the possibility of a data breach
- Demonstrating the operating effectiveness of intended controls by Advertima (such as Data Protection By Design and By Default and Security of Processing)
Protecting personal data is one of our core business values. That’s why we strive to evaluate customer data privacy issues by adapting the Data Privacy by Design and By Default approach throughout our solution’s provisioning and entire lifecycle. At every level of what we do, we go beyond the bare minimum to protect data and work with our clients to keep customer data privacy and security a top priority in our operations.
Do you have any questions or comments? Please get in touch with us!
