New Report from Cheetah Digital Reveals Critical Data and Privacy Concerns

The 2022 Global Digital Consumer Trends Index, released by Cheetah Digital, a cross-channel relationship management solution provider, in conjunction with eConsultancy, examined consumer attitudes and year over year trends across personalisation, privacy, messaging, advertising and brand loyalty.

Protection of Privacy is On The Rise

As privacy regulations sweep the globe and data breaches continue to dominate news cycles, consumers are more privacy conscious than ever online. We have seen huge rises in those turning to incognito browsing (50% increase), a PC cleaner (48% increase), password generator (40% increase), ad blocking tech (37% increase), paid for premium software (31% increase), and a password manager 31% increase).

Use Data But With Permission

While most consumers will trade personal data for personalised content, they prefer brands only use data that they’ve explicitly shared directly to the brand (zero-party data). Other tactics are considered “creepy.” Among the creepiest are: ads based on location data (67%), retargeting ads derived from tracking cookies (62%), and ads related to something they discussed near a smart device (61%).

Email Reigns

When it comes to driving sales, email remains one of the most effective channels, beating banner ads, social media ads, organic posts, and SMS by up to 108%. Half of consumers report purchasing a product directly as a result of an email they received in the last 12 months.

A Critical Time To Adapt and Shift

This data comes at a critical time, as the effects of the pandemic continue to reverberate throughout the marketing landscape. While some consumer behaviours and attitudes remained the same, many others changed — and quickly. Shifts that once took years to emerge are taking place in a matter of weeks, pushing brands to arm themselves with the latest data to keep up, and respond appropriately.

“The path to customer acquisition has evolved from a relatively straightforward train track to a bowl of spaghetti, with multiple channels and formats to navigate,” said Tim Glomb, VP Content at Cheetah Digital. “Brands can no longer get away with lumping customers into segments, but rather must treat them as individuals. This requires developing authentic relationships, offering real value exchange, and interpreting the right customer signals at the right time in the right channel. That’s a lot to absorb, but the Consumer Trends Index is designed to help.”

“This report offers brands an extraordinary opportunity to assess their ability to create and execute campaigns that meet and exceed consumers’ growing demand for more personalisation, more privacy and a deeper relationship with the brands they know and trust,” Glomb said. “How brands respond will impact their bottom line in both the short and long term.”

The 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index shares insight from 5,404 consumers across six countries including the U.K. France, Spain, Ireland, the U.S, Australia and Japan and can be accessed here.

Methodology

The 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index shares insight from 5,404 consumers across six countries (Australia, France, Japan, Spain, the U.K. and Ireland, and the U.S.) as well as by age group (18-24, 25-39, 40-54, and 55-75), gender and annual household income ($0-$25,000, $25,001-$50,000, $50,001-$75,000, $75,001-$100,000, $100,001-$150,000 and over $150,000) to help digital strategists and decision-makers understand how these issues fit together to build more meaningful and lasting relationships between brand and buyer.

The format for this version of the report focuses mainly on a global view across all demographics.

Be sure to visit www.cheetahdigital.com for additional findings from the research focused on the differences in attitudes among varying age groups, along with a U.S.-only data report. (Both scheduled for late spring 2022.)