Data makes the world go round for marketers

Posted by on 21/06/2011

By Gideon Spanier

The advertising industry's finest are gathering for this week's annual festival for creatives - the Cannes Lions. But arguably the biggest issue facing the marketing and communications industry at present isn't the battle of ideas. It is the battle for data - a word guaranteed to make most creatives' hearts sink.

As the title of a recent conference hosted by City brokers Numis put it: "Data makes the world go round". The vast proliferation of data that every consumer now generates through their web, mobile and offline behaviour is a marketer's dream, offering endless targeting opportunities.

Digital data, in particular, can be collected in real time, is highly predictive, and can demonstrate a measurable return on investment. However, it also has the potential to be a major headache - and not just because of the privacy implications.

Many advertisers and media owners fear they are losing the battle for control of this data to the dominant technology players, led by Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.

As Channel 4 boss David Abraham said recently: "It is essential... that we ensure that the data that exists around content we generate with our creative partners is not simply controlled and commercially exploited by other platforms - whoever they are."

Such thinking is behind the Financial Times' decision to challenge Apple in what the paper called a "Mexican stand-off". Rather than continue to let Apple control much of the data on every purchase of the FT app on iPad, the newspaper has moved to create its own web-based app for all tablet computers. Now the FT's owner Pearson has a far greater degree of control over its data.

Chief executive Dame Marjorie Scardino, speaking at the time of annual results, explained "data capture" is a key priority. "It is important for us to have a relationship with readers and understand what they like," she said.

Collecting and storing data is only just the start, of course. The test is to make sense of it - a task that is becoming harder because of the sheer volumes that are being generated.

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