Marketing By Privacy

With today's headline (4.3.21) Google joins in the new marketing trend adopted by the likes of Apple, Snapchat, Signal and Telegram. More and more companies are moving away from viewing privacy and data protection as a burden and more towards viewing it as an opportunity to build trust, and consequently, a stronger relationship with their customers.

Recent developments in privacy and data protection laws have been particularly impactful on consumer network providers (CNPs) such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc. CNPs often provide users (NB the intentional use of the term 'users' rather than 'customers') with free access to their platforms.

It is possible to argue that, in this particular business model, the users are not the customers but rather the products. To simplify, CNPs could be considered as advertisement boards – only much more sophisticated and powerful. Their economy revolves around getting to know their users and providing advertisers with a very