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Optimizing BigQuery for Data-Intensive GDPR Compliance

When a programmatic advertising company needed guidance in deploying Google Cloud’s BigQuery to continually obfuscate massive amounts of user data in compliance with the EU’s strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Redapt stepped in to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution.

In a nutshell

Although the in-app advertising platform had successfully migrated most of its workloads from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), they were still using AWS to target and remove EU user data in its tracked ads for ongoing GDPR compliance. Seeking a way to transition to utilizing BigQuery for this process, the company turned to Redapt. In addition to advising on best practices using BigQuery, we provided them with a custom coding solution to effectively identify and obfuscate the user data in a fraction of the previous time, significantly reducing their costs and processing time.

The problem

The in-app advertising platform did not yet have an effective way to identify and remove EU user data within Google Cloud’s BigQuery. As a result, the company was still using AWS to obfuscate EU user data, but the process was costly and required nearly five days to execute the previous week’s user data removal requests.

The solution

Redapt developed a customized method for the company to utilize BigQuery for its EU user data obfuscation requests in a much more efficient manner than the complicated and bogged-down process previously used.

The outcome

The in-app advertising platform was able to fully move its workloads over to GCP and deploy BigQuery as its primary solution for obfuscating EU user data in compliance with the GDPR — significantly reducing their processing time and costs as well.

Moment of clarity

The in-app advertising platform’s current process for meeting GDPR compliance was overly complicated, time-consuming, and costly.

Redapt determined that a customized coding solution to deploy within BigQuery could enable the company to precisely target the exact user data requiring obfuscation at scale and significantly reduce the processing time.

What the company needed

The in-app advertising platform’s ad-tracking is integrated into hundreds of thousands of games with tens of billions of sessions per month. The company was in dire need of a time-efficient and cost-effective way to continually differentiate and obfuscate an extraordinary number of sessions from users within the EU to meet GDPR compliance. The platform’s previous setup in AWS was extremely slow and affected potential revenue due to a reduced scope in their programmatic ad-tracking deployment.

Our recommendation

First, Redapt connected with the in-app advertising platform to triage the main issues with migrating its data workload into BigQuery.

After examining the company’s previous usage of AWS to obfuscate user data, Redapt concluded that a custom-developed code for BigQuery would enable the platform to quickly identify and remove troves of EU user data in accordance with GDPR clear requests while eliminating the previous lag time of five days.

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The end result

The company now has an optimized way to obfuscate millions of its EU users’ data sessions as needed to remain GDPR-compliant. The user data processing time has been cut from several days to just a matter of hours, which has allowed the in-app advertising platform to expand its ad-tracking scope and increase revenue. The company has also reduced its overhead costs on the data obfuscation process by 90 percent.

Full and ongoing compliance with the weekly load of GDPR user data clear requests
Significant reduction in data obfuscation time
A simplified code solution for BigQuery deployment
Increased revenue from the expanded ad-tracking scope
90 percent reduction in GDPR data obfuscation costs