The mobile apps industry, especially companies based in the EU, have watched General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) draw closer over the last two years. With such lead time, did the industry meet Friday’s deadline? Based on my conversations over the past month with 30-plus mobile publishers, adve…
The mobile apps industry, especially companies based in the EU, have watched General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) draw closer over the last two years. With such lead time, did the industry meet Friday’s deadline? Based on my conversations over the past month with 30-plus mobile publishers, advertisers, and SDK partners, it appears that they’ve implemented solutions to the most complicated requirements i.e. enabling a user to obtain all personal data collected by the service and its partners. However, many of these publishers have not been proactive with Article 8. This requirement, which is in fact quite similar to COPPA, prohibits collecting and processing data on users below the age of consent (typically 13) without verified parental consent.
Here, just as with COPPA, it seems that the majority of publishers are going to rely on the reasoning “we’re not sure if we have any users that are minors as we have no reliable way to determine user age.” A solution is especially important to me, as my social enterprise focuses on quality and safe kids screen time.
Without a doubt, there is a way to comply with the entirety of GDPR and even COPPA, while increasing ROI for advertisers and increasing monetization capabilities for publishers. I’ll first share what I learned in my conversations and then provide my recommended strategy.
Because concern of revenue loss is the primary reason publishers are reluctant to comply with Article 8, I decided to crunch some numbers to see if there is any way to actually increase revenues with compliance, or at least to minimize the loss in revenue with full GDPR compliance i.e. users not opting-in to data collection/processing. I learned it is actually possible to increase revenues, especially for publishers with:
How can revenues increase?
In continuing to carry out our Mission of keeping kids safe, healthy, and productive when interacting with technology, we are making headway into developing new solutions to help publishers, advertisers, and SDK partners to comply with Article 8 and COPPA. Note, because I’ve spent several years in mobile publishing and UA, I understand that compliance is most likely to only happen when folks are confidently able to minimize exposure and increase opportunities, which we are certainly optimizing toward. If you want to learn more about what we’re working toward, reach out to me.
William Heathershaw’s decade in tech has primarily focused on mobile, within both startups and public companies, based in Beijing and the Bay Area.
