In 2020, Arielle Garcia became the first-ever chief privacy officer at IPG’s UM Worldwide, reflective of media agencies readying for the likelihood of increased privacy regulations.

Nearly three years into this role, Garcia is seeing privacy restrictions in the U.S. again tightening in 2023 as states begin rolling out their own consumer protection laws. At UM, before Garcia came along, the firm began having “client privacy primers” to stay on top of privacy issues.

In the future, Garcia believes agencies will see “more of the harmonization” between privacy expertise and client support. Many client conversations today revolve around California’s rules, focusing on operations and solutions as the landscape changes.

“Part of it is having our own central team – the first thing that we did here was we had a privacy champions network from GDPR,” she said. “We expanded that to create client privacy champions, because you need someone that’s embedded in each of the teams. Clients take different approaches to this.”

Read more in Digiday.