TikTok’s Testing New Privacy-Protective Ad Targeting Tools

TikTok’s looking to align its ad targeting processes with emerging data privacy shifts through the addition of a new offering, called PrivacyGo, which would enable advertisers to match their own CRM info with TikTok’s audience insights, in a privacy-protective way.

The process would essentially function like a data clean room, where collaborating parties share their data into a protected digital space. That then ensures that the information can be used for ad targeting, without either party having access to the other’s information, enabling more specific audience reach without compromising regulations.

As reported by Business Insider, TikTok’s currently experimenting with its PrivacyGo approach, with a view to making it more broadly available in the near future.

According to TikTok, the process will use multi-party computation (MPC) and differential privacy to keep the data sets separate, and ensure that there’s no access from any of the related groups. TikTok says that the U.S. Government uses the same approach to analyze census data, which it’s hoping will provide enough assurance that the practice is safe and up to standard for all involved.

Because more than any other app, TikTok is likely to come under intense scrutiny over its data usage practices.

The Chinese-owned company is still under investigation by CFIUS over its potential links to the Chinese Government, and the potential for US user data to be provided direct to Chinese spy agencies, as a result of people using the app. That may still result in a full U.S. TikTok ban, while other regions also continue to raise concerns about its data-gathering processes, and what TikTok info could be used for in such context.

Which is why this could be a critical update for TikTok specifically, ensuring that it can still utilize sensitive user insights to improve ad targeting, without falling foul of evolving protection rules.

And if it works, it could help more brands maximize their ad campaigns, with improved ad targeting options to reach your most engaged audiences in the app.

There’ll be a lot of scrutiny on this process, and TikTok will likely need to provide a lot of in-detail explanations to reassure ad partners. But it could be a big boost to your TikTok ad targeting options.