Scott Simon asks Kelly Deen, vice president of marketing for a smoothie powder retailer, how an Apple privacy feature is affecting smaller businesses.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
iPhone users may have seen an alert they get when they open an app for the first time – ask the app not to track. It’s a reassuring idea for those who don’t want what they click and search to be tracked across other platforms. When Apple introduced that privacy tool called App Tracking Transparency last spring, it intercepted a huge stream of data used by the mobile advertising industry. Facebook’s parent company Meta took a big hit, but the Financial Times said smaller businesses were also feeling the effect. Kelly Deen is vice president of marketing for Kencko. They sell smoothie packs online and she joins us now. Thank you so much for being with us.
KELLY DEEN: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Has that been bad for your business?
DEEN: Well, it’s certainly brought a bunch of new challenges, that’s for sure. Like a lot of companies in our situation—you know, starting from scratch, still considered a startup—it’s been a pretty exciting time, you know, before this privacy change, to be able to get off the ground in a way relatively easy by, you know, finding customers, especially, as you mentioned, through apps like Facebook and being able to advertise there quite efficiently. And where we’ve seen changes is – you know, it’s…
SIMON: You’ve been able to target your ads to people who have expressed what you believe is an interest that might lead them to accept your smoothie packs.
DEEN: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, the changes now are that basically advertising works a lot, you know, less than before. It is less efficient. It costs us more.
SIMON: Of course, we want to disclose that Apple is among NPR’s financial backers, and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, pays NPR to license NPR content. I realize it might make business more difficult for you, but aren’t many people probably rightly concerned about their privacy?
DEEN: Oh, no doubt about it. And I don’t think any business, you know, including Kencko, disagrees in any way, shape or form with the direction and, you know, the movement of people having more control over their data and their privacy. There is no doubt about it. It just means, as a marketer, which is what I – my day job, outside of being, you know, a consumer who obviously cares deeply about my data and my privacy – it just means as a marketer, we have to let’s do it differently. ways and look for new ways to find, you know, customers efficiently and change our playbook a little bit, looking for those channels, doing a lot of testing – a lot of testing and learning – to find a mix that can be more effective for us. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing, really, you know, since the tide started to turn last year.
SIMON: Can I ask, how many platforms do you have to buy ads on? Can you tell us?
DIN: Oh, my god. Right now, you know, we’re probably spread across five or six at any given time. And then we – I go with the 80-20 rule. You know, we spend about 80% of our budget on things that we know work and work well and 20% on testing new things, and we’re always testing new things. So if you removed the test pieces, it’s probably about five or six.
SIMON: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad for your product.
DIN: Well, we’ll have to make sure we find you somehow, some way, one of these days. Without that tracking, I guess I can’t go hunting you.
SIMON: This is Kencko’s vice president of marketing, Kelly Deen. Thank you so much for being with us.
DIN: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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