The marketer’s job specification used to be a little more straightforward. Buyer personas would be crafted, innovative campaigns were created and personalization was powered by masses of data points aggregated from all manner of third-party sources.
But then came the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the enactment of global privacy legislation and the epiphany that much of this data that had been purchased from third-party vendors was stale and inaccurate. Furthermore, the consumer data filling most marketing databases hadn’t been collected with the consents mapped to the way marketers were using the data, meaning it fell afoul of burgeoning privacy legislation.
In light of this, there has become a need to re-evaluate the relationship between brands and consumers and how marketers collect the data they use to power their campaigns. It’s time to embrace the value exchange economy.
The limitations of third-party data
Third-party data plays a role in connecting with digital consumers, but marketers’ overreliance on it has led to the shift in the data landscape we see today.
This class of data is commonly amassed from a host of unrelated and unreliable sources like credit scores, cookies and click trails. As a result, it quickly becomes antiquated and has no direct relationship with the individual consumer, which ultimately hampers the quality and effectiveness of campaigns.
Consumer preferences, budgets, household sizes and the like all evolve and change as time passes, and third-party consumer data rapidly becomes limited in value.