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If you think you know privacy, think again. Marketers have been through a lot with GDPR and ATT and SKAdNetwork and (maybe) Privacy Sandbox, not to mention less data from the major platforms and tough choices between deterministic and granular on iOS. But we’re starting to see the privacy end game now.
And while we’ll probably never see a majority or even sizable minority of people sign up for this privacy end game, we just might see the most valuable users, players, and customers go this route.
There’s a brand new mobile carrier that bills itself as “the only mobile carrier built with privacy and security at its core.” and says that its technology masks both location and identity.
Privacy end game via MNVO
It’s called Cape, and while it was first aimed at serving government officials and military leaders, its currently being expanded to other high-risk users: domestic abuse survivors, activists, whistleblowers, and journalists. Essentially, people who are at high risk of surveillance and/or tracking.
But it’s likely to go far beyond that initial market.
And what this MNVO or mobile virtual network operator does is pretty unique:
- Automatically changes device identifiers regularly (IMEI, IMSI)
- Automatically changes ad IDs regularly (MAID/GAID)
- Collects no names
- Stores no social security numbers
- Does not request your birthdate
- Runs all traffic through its own tech, so subscriber authentication plus call and SMS routing is all controlled internally
- Minimizes data shared to the network
- Blocks SIM swapping with a 24-word private key, which it does not store or read
When you sign on as a customer of Cape you get an Android phone with a custom software build. You create a bunch of different personas with different identifiers and characteristics, and the phone cycles through them automatically: as frequently as every hour, and with the option to add some random variance.
You can also geofence areas for each persona, essentially becoming another person in a specific region as far as the internet is concerned.
The internet … and of course adtech.
How big will this grow?
Cape is a startup, but it’s not tiny and insignificant. It has raised $61 million from name-brand venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz and A*, which has invested in companies like PayPal, Uber, airbnb, DoorDash, and Palantir.
The $61 million is intended to help fuel a nationwide mobile network with premium wireless coverage … and next-level privacy and security. And Cape’s goal is to make it available for general consumers in early 2025.
In other words, the privacy end game.
As I said earlier, Cape isn’t likely to become the next AT&T or Verizon. We’re probably not going to see 10s of millions of people suddenly go dark. But we might eventually see something like Mint Mobile, which likely had around 3 million subscribers when it was acquired by T-Mobile.
But many of them are likely to be high-value users.
And if Cape becomes anything of a market threat to the big mobile carriers, we might see privacy, which Apple has monetized as part of its brand in the hardware and software space, start to become something of a competitive layer in the carrier space as well.
Where do marketers go in the privacy end game?
No shock and no surprise here: if the privacy end game as illustrated by Cape becomes widespread, you’ve got several primary sources of marketing measurement and optimization levers left.
- Upper funnel data
Insights from your ad partners and platforms on views, clicks, and engagements - MMM
Media mix modeling, which can be challenging but can also be useful (see Singular’s MMM here) - Incrementality
Incrementality can be super-powerful, is completely privacy-safe, and is part of Singular’s measurement philosophy - Link decoration
UTMs can be helpful, if they survive any Apple ATP-style cloaking - CAPIs
Conversion APIs can fill the gap when public identifiers are missing
Obviously, privacy and security are good things. Also obviously, there are ways for marketers to know which ads worked without privacy violations.
Targeting, of course, becomes very different. Especially if you don’t have first-party data like an email address that you can hash and upload in an audience to an ad partner. In this sense, a Cape Android-based device would be very similar to iOS phones today.
The marketing goal for the privacy end game, however, is pretty simple: work with a partner (like Singular) that helps you measure and optimize campaigns in privacy-safe ways.
