What encrypted social networks mean for marketers
Privacy is a rare commodity nowadays.
What with Facebook making it increasingly difficult to manage who sees what, and even the ephemeral SnapChat being revealed to not be all that ephemeral.
A negative SEO case study: how to spot an attack & fix it
While compiling our annual end-of-year round up of search trends I noted that several of our esteemed experts mentioned negative SEO.
This refers to a sneaky tactic where people create a load of spammy links to a competitor’s site so they end up being penalised by Google.
How the sharing economy will develop in 2015
The sharing economy has grown exponentially in the past few years to the point where it has impacted nearly all industries.
Airbnb and Uber are the most obvious examples, but other sectors such as logistics, utilities and education have also been disrupted by new startups.
Why trust is vital if brands are to make the most of consumer data
Anyone who has ever watched Spider-Man will know that with great power comes great responsibility.
Digital technology has given marketers access to an unfathomable amount of customer data, however it should be used in a responsible manner for risk of destroying consumer trust.
This is particularly important in our world of freemium products that rely on a value exchange of digital services in return for access to personal data.
A new Econsultancy/Acxiom report investigates consumer attitudes towards sharing their data with companies, revealing that opinion is split on whether brands can be trusted.
Only 6% of respondents in the Delivering Value in the Data Exchange Survey indicated that they had ‘a great deal of trust’ in companies to whom they provided data.
Making the move from Big Data to ‘Smart Data’
In the past decade there has been a massive increase in the amount of data that is potentially available to marketers.
But simply having a lot of data is of no real use to anyone. It’s the quality of the data and what you do with it that counts.
If I may indulge in the use of some buzzwords: marketers need to move from big data to smart data.
A new report from Econsultancy and Acxiom investigates the complexity of the data landscape, especially in relation to marketing, and the importance of getting it right in the mind’s eye of the consumer.
Entitled Delivering Value in the Data Exchange, the report is based on interviews with brand-side senior executives as well as an online survey of 1,000 UK consumers.
Making real-time marketing less creepy (how & why you should)
Ask your average person born around the turn of the century, meaning this one, about ‘real time marketing’ and you’re likely to get a moralistic ear-raid.
They’ll talk about the theoretical evils of the NSA, randomly but comprehensively gathering personal data about any number of individuals supposedly in the name of our collective well being.
Even though almost everyone with a smartphone makes tracking their every move relatively easy with constant check-ins and status updates, there remains a deeply entrenched paranoia when it comes to any organization ‘spying’ on us citizens, even if we’re part of the problem by being so carefree in our digital communications.
‘We’ don’t want ‘them’ to be intrusive, but ‘they’ don’t want ‘us’ to remain elusive. Therein lies the philosophical paradox.
In short: How can an honest marketing scheme be pervasive without being invasive?
That is the rub, of course and it’s a sea of gray area that marketers must learn to navigate..
Three’s a crowd: how first-party data builds customer relationships
Three’s a crowd, and I’m not referring to failed 80s sitcoms. I’m talking about customer relationships.
Yet according to a study by the UC Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, 85% of the top 1,000 websites have cookies set by a third party.
Propelled by widespread anonymity in the early days of the Internet, third-party cookies have undoubtedly become a staple for many marketers, tracking consumer behaviors across the web with the promise of uncovering invaluable insights.
Not only is this an invasion of consumer privacy (more on that later), but it also prevents businesses from truly knowing and understanding their customers.
First-party data, transparently collected via voluntary user registration, on-site activities and interactions, removes data brokers as middlemen, establishing direct brand and consumer connections and fostering 1:1 relationships.
Let’s take a look at three ways that third-party cookies are hurting your customer relationships, and how first-party data can be collected and used to improve audience understanding and user experiences.
The EU ‘cookie law’: what has it done for us?
It’s now more than two years since the cookie law began to be ‘enforced’ in the UK, but has it changed anything?
In the run up to the May 2012 ‘deadline’ there was plenty of confusion from online businesses over the steps required to comply with the directive, thanks to some unclear instructions.
Now cookie notices are seen on most websites, though the ICO received just 38 ‘concerns’ about cookies on sites between April and June 2014.
So was it worth the effort? Are cookie notices just an irritant? Is it totally irrelevant given the activities of the NSA? Or has this law been useful in raising awareness of cookies?
Privacy and personalization: a marketer’s Catch-22
Coined in Joseph Heller’s classic satirical novel of the same name, ‘Catch-22’ is a term that refers to a situation in which a person is trapped by completely contradictory goals or circumstances.
In Heller’s book, the only way for a pilot to escape his WWII flying mission is to request psychiatric evaluation due to mental instability, and be deemed insane.
However, awareness of his own insanity is considered proof of a rational mind, thus making it impossible to escape his mission, a total and complete Catch-22.
No doubt, many marketers are feeling stuck in this sort of paradoxical situation when it comes to the competing goals of consumer privacy and personalization.
Spotlight on data privacy: three steps to building consumer trust
Consumer concern about data privacy has shifted over the past decade.
More than ten years ago, consumers were concerned when companies such as Amazon analyzed their data to provide them with a recommended list of products they may be interested in based on their purchase habits.
Fast forwarding to today, many consumers now expect companies to mine their data through the use of analytics to provide them with relevant offers and products to improve their shopping experience.
Yet, recent data breaches have placed a spotlight on data privacy once again, moving the topic of consumer personalization versus privacy back to the forefront of the marketing conversation.
The global ramifications of Singapore’s new Data Protection Act
Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act went into effect on July 2. It’s a local law, but it matters to digital marketers globally.
Information wants to be free, but most people prefer a few safeguards on personal data.
Sure we may be happy for our LinkedIn profile to be seen by a prospective employer, but we’d hardly like them to have our medical history.
Right now in many countries however, there is little if any restriction on how our personal data is collected, traded and used.
Privacy: How much personal data are we willing to share?
The play Privacy has just opened at London’s Donmar Warehouse and it is a must-see for those involved in data, analytics and personalisation.
This excellent play explores the issues of privacy and surveillance in the post-Snowden era. The play starts with the writer seeing his therapist, exploring his unwillingness to share.
The writer then commits to share online after being pressed by his Director and from this premise we explore the issues of privacy and security and secrecy.