The past decade of growth has been led by technology, a sector distinguished by one foundational competitive advantage: data collection about individuals. This “C2B” model involves collecting data describing consumer behavior and monetizing that information through advertising and other means.

As digital strategy takes center stage, data collection has become a big part of digital transformation outside the technology sector. The practice of collecting information is widespread enough that a new category called a

Customer Data Platform has emerged to describe systems and services that provide data collection, storage, mining and activation functionality. Heightened focus on collection of consumer information is expected to continue well into the next decade, further accelerated by the move to cloud computing and its modular, flexible and unified platform players (each of which has offered or announced a CDP in the last year).

To be sure, the internet is also changing. Awareness of the competitive advantage that our data provides is on the rise, along with legislation designed to prevent or address natural unfairness in the new market for everything that can be known. Primarily, this unfairness takes the form of violations of consent, an analog legal concept applied through laws like GDPR and CCPA.

These laws make collecting information about consumers much more difficult. In addition, the growing concerns of the “data subjects” that they protect as we all start to learn more about just how much the digital world knows about us presents a potential brand trust issue.