Section 1 of the report discusses how the nature of data, digital connections, and attention has changed. It emphasizes the importance of understanding your clients directly, rather than through intermediaries who categorize and interpret your customers in ways that are unclear to you both. In the AI age, where every company uses its own models and data to shape its brand and product relevance, the most reliable data comes from direct sources.
However, achieving direct connections at scale requires thoughtful technical upgrades in privacy and data management, as well as proof of humanness. Crypto offers two key solutions for these complex challenges: zero-knowledge proofs and proof of provenance. In a crypto-enabled future, we don’t trust; we verify, and we don’t reference; we prove.
Below are some items mentioned in the report, along with additional resources for you to learn more.
You can find a little more about the rise of zero party data here – Zero-party data: This data is voluntarily shared by customers with a company, which includes personal preferences, purchase intentions or how they want to be recognized.
I also recommend this talk by Signal’s CEO, Meredith Whittaker, skip to the 27 minute mark to hear her great explanation about why the data you collect isn’t actually a true representation of who your customers are or how they want to be known. In addition here is the talk she recently gave at SXSW where she is quoted saying – “The only way to protect data, is not to collect it.“
In this section, I also address what I believe is one of the biggest shifts companies will face in the next ten years, affecting the core of how they operate, specifically, how they communicate and relate to customers. This change will impact every industry. Traditional big brands, hands off mass marketing, and single message public relations are being dismantled and replaced and companies need a new set of tools to engage the next generation of customers. Marc Andreessen of A16z articulated this perfectly in a recent podcast. You can find the whole conversation here.
Lastly, in this section of the report, I reference a future where customers shop using shopping bots. This means that current identity systems protecting shopping sites will need to be updated to include “certified” bots linked to customer accounts, or potentially uncertified ones, for customers who wish to remain anonymous when purchasing products online. This move is further supported by Visa and Mastercard’s announcement that they are allowing AI bots to use credit cards.
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