In the marketing world, data is valuable currency … and not just valuable to you, as a marketer or business owner. Whether their email address, credit card information, or smartphone location, consumers also view their data as precious and privileged.

The Internet of Things paradigm envisions the pervasive interconnection and cooperation of smart things over the current and future Internet infrastructure. The Internet of Things is, thus, the evolution of the Internet to cover the real world, enabling many new services that will improve people’s everyday lives, spawn new businesses, and make buildings, cities, and transport smarter. Smart things allow indeed for ubiquitous data collection or tracking, but these useful features are also examples of privacy threats that are already now limiting the success of the Internet of Things vision when not implemented correctly. These threats involve new challenges such as the pervasive privacy-aware management of personal data or methods to control or avoid ubiquitous tracking and profiling.

GDPR will drive data protection legislation globally.
Since the introduction of GDPR in Europe in May 2018, many industry leaders, trade bodies, and legislators are now in favor of setting up similar privacy laws in the US and other regions.

Impact in 2020: Best practices on data usage will be established.
More than ever, marketers have started to think through what they need to do to manage customer data carefully. While GDPR started in Europe, any company that does business in Europe is required to follow the legislation. To learn more, check out our GDPR Hub.