Category Archives: Huh?

November 5, 2015 · 9:47 am

It’s Not Just Data

There is an interesting case that was argued before the Supreme Court the other day and it just might have an impact on your business.  There was also a lawsuit filed in an unrelated matter that could have the same effect.  A third item is a study that’s kind of scary. Let’s have a quick look at them and think about what they might mean to anyone who gathers information about their customers. 

First, the case before The Supremes.  It involves Spokeo, one of the large data aggregators.  Spokeo’s information about a consumer was almost 100% wrong.  As Justice Kagan said, “They basically got everything wrong about him. They got his marital status wrong. They got his income wrong. They got his education wrong. They basically portrayed a different person.”  The plaintiff was seeking a job when he filed suit, and worried that the errors in the report would affect his job search.  The other suit involves Ashley Madison.  They were sued for allegedly misleading users by inflating the number of women who belonged to the service.  As we have found out from the data hack, only a small percentage of the profiles belonged to actual women who used the site.  The company hired employees whose jobs were to create thousands of fake female profiles.

I suspect that a third form of data abuse will be in the courts shortly, as a recent study found that the average Android app sends potentially sensitive data to 3.1 third-party domains, and the average iOS app connects to 2.6 third-party domains.  None of the apps notify users that their information is being shared with third parties.  Data that’s wrong, data that’s fake, and data that’s shared without permission.  I suppose if we could get the fake guys to populate the wrong guys, sharing it without permission wouldn’t be a big deal.  Since it’s your personal information, it is.

If you gather data (and who doesn’t), you have a responsibility to keep it secure and not to use it for purposes beyond what the owner of the data (that would be you and me) reasonably expects you’ll be doing with it.  If you’re disseminating data, especially data that could impact someone’s life and not just your own business, you need to be sure it’s accurate.  And if you’re making stuff up, please just go away.

They’re not just data points, folks.  They’re people.  Maybe they’re lawsuits in waiting, or maybe they’re your spouse, kids, or parents.  Let’s be careful out there, ok?

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October 28, 2015 · 10:54 am

Misreading Their Minds

Every so often a piece of research comes along that asks the same questions of consumers and marketers and then compares the answers.  It’s instructive to see the differences in how the folks who are responsible for knowing how their consumers see the world vs. how those consumers themselves see it.  The latest example of this comes from the folks at Spong, and their 2015 Brand Reputation Study.  Their release on the information begins with this:

An organization’s brand is one of its most valuable assets. Greatly influenced by the reputation of the organization, the strength and weaknesses of a brand can have a direct impact on every aspect of the business, including the bottom line. But when it comes to evaluating what is most important or least important about a brand, a new brand reputation study from Spong indicates that marketers may not really understand what consumers care about and think.

Hmm.  That doesn’t sound particularly good, but what does it mean in real terms?  First and foremost, it turns out that marketers overestimate how often consumers talk about brands.  Marketers seem to think that consumers chat about what companies are doing a poor job, with 88% of marketers saying they think consumers do so daily or weekly.  The reality is that fewer than a third (31%) do so.  While a little paranoia is a good thing, I suspect this thinking leads into another data point the survey found.

Marketers underrate editorial and overrate social as a source of information, with 14% of consumers calling editorial a top source of accurate brand information.  Only 6% of marketers think consumers see it that way.  Conversely, we’re smarter than most marketers are about the accuracy of social media.  27% of marketers think consumers use it as an accurate source of brand information; the real number is less than half that (13%).

Consumers also put more importance on whether a brand is local far more often than marketers think consumers do. 30% of shoppers said they would always or most of the time choose local over national brands, all things being equal while only 12% of marketers would expect that sentiment. I guess the point is that once again, those of us who are supposed to have our finger on our customers’ pulses have missed the boat. As they summed up:

The research paints a picture that should serve as a wake-up call for marketers, whose stock in trade is understanding what triggers consumer behavior. As the research reveals, marketers over-valued a few key customer concerns at the expense of the wide range of other issues affecting their decision-making.

I agree wth that.  You?

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October 27, 2015 · 11:26 am

A $24 Billion Secret

If you use any sort of connected device – a computer, a tablet, or a cell phone – you’re probably (hopefully, anyway) aware that someone is watching.  Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it’s accurate.  Everything you do, and everywhere you go if it’s a mobile device, is logged, along with some sort of device identifier.  It’s not hard to link a device with a person and that person with behaviors.  That’s really what the targeted advertising business is about.  

In that context, this article from Ad Age shouldn’t come as a real shock, but it’s always a little disconcerting to get a glimpse inside the factory where they make the sausage:

Under the radar, Verizon, Sprint, Telefonica and other carriers have partnered with firms including SAP, IBM, HP and AirSage to manage, package and sell various levels of data to marketers and other clients. It’s all part of a push by the world’s largest phone operators to counteract diminishing subscriber growth through new business ventures that tap into the data that showers from consumers’ mobile web surfing, text messaging and phone calls.

That’s why Verizon bought AOL and some ad tech companies, paying over $4.5 Billion for them.  Think that’s a wise investment?  Well, the global market for telco data as a service is potentially worth $24.1 billion this year, so it seems like it might be to me.  What’s less wise is that most consumers have no clue that all of this information about them – their surfing habits, their travel habits, potentially numbers they’re constantly texting, etc – are being packaged and sold without their consent.  Oh sure – when you sign the contract to use any of the carriers there is a lengthy terms of service agreement you probably clicked right through, and it contained language that said your data may be anonymized and aggregated and sold.  I’m not sure most people understand what that means in real terms.  Try getting phone service without agreeing.

Unlike most apps, which are opt-in, you really have no choice about this.  Are there benefits to the consumer?  Maybe.  In theory, you don’t see ads for things in which you have no interest, and you don’t get information about companies and services that aren’t in your area.   There is a huge downside, however, aside from the creepy factor.  Hackers can steal information that might allow them to know when your home is vacant on a daily basis, for example.  In fact, this sort of thing doesn’t go on in the E.U. countries because of the strict data protections those countries enforce.

The “tell” I see is that the phone companies don’t want to discuss this data business and the revenues they make from selling off our data.  If there wasn’t something nefarious going on, why isn’t it more out in the open?  Maybe if we all knew what was being gathered (300 cellphone events per day per subscriber by some counts), we’d be more curious?  Maybe we’d take steps, as some of us do with tracking blockers on the web, to maintain control of our own data?  What do you think?

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