I’ve been doing some
research for my group project into the issue of data management and collection,
and what advertisers really know about you. The shocking truth, according to a
limited survey carried out by a firm called Enliken (whose business is to get
people to give them more accurate data about themselves in exchange for access
to content) is that half of what advertisers think they know about you – from your politics to your style –
could be wrong.
Although the survey only
covered 116 people and about 9000 data points, its findings were seen to
provide a valuable sample highlighting the biggest issue with current tracking and
ad-targeting companies – namely, that they may capture a lot of data and link
it to a profile, but in actual fact much of it can be wrong.
The low levels of accuracy can be for
various reasons – from user-entered inaccuracies, to error-prone software to
false positive and negatives in the interpretation of data points. As for
company performance, well Yahoo came in lowest on the league, with 48%
inaccuracy and worse than bluekai at 40%. Google came in first, but still with
an average of 20% inaccuracy and 12% uncertain.
In the Mashable article,
where the writer himself took the survey, he came out on the upside – only 26%
of the data about him was obviously wrong! If that’s seen as "good", no wonder why it's so hard to design a really effective online marketing campaign.
Read on: For more details on the accuracy (or inaccuracy!)
of the top tracker companies (including bluekai, Yahoo! and
Google), see the story at Mashable: http://mashable.com/2013/03/19/enliken-online-advertising/
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