Are we finally making digital data collection and usage fairer and more transparent?
A few years back I went for a late-night run (well, to the casual observer it probably looked more like a ‘jog,’ but there you go…) and stopped to sync my Fitbit tracker with the app on my iPhone. It malfunctioned — well, at least I think it did, since it was 12 midnight when I hit ‘sync’ and then watched as I effectively lost the entire previous day’s data. Chuckling at myself for feeling a sense of loss, I thought about reaching out for restitution (after all, this was MY data!) but quickly shook it off and resumed my run, wondering how much power any individual will obtain over their data in this new world of ‘Code Halos’ and the massive digital services platforms.
The answer until recently is “not much.” But perhaps this is changing. This past week Facebook’s parent company Meta decided to pull back some data targeting capabilities in sensitive areas — namely politics, religion, ethnicity and health. Is this the beginning of a broader rebalancing of the value exchange between data aggregators and digital service providers and their users? Or a temporary, cynical, tactical retreat? Perhaps it’s both— since there are broader trends point to an emerging and growing desire to reset the asymmetrical power balance between those targeting products and services (and agendas) to people using the incredibly rich insights these data services provide. We digital marketers — who have benefitted from the targeting power of these engagement platforms — will need to adjust our expectations about how much we can know about our target audiences, and, ideally, be a part of a more balanced value exchange of ‘my data for your service’ world of digital engagement.
From the original Polk surveys through to syndicated data services, marketers have used data to inform their message and targeting. We’d tell ourselves “hey — it’s to keep our message relevant and avoid inefficiencies” — and in practical terms we were right. But the old survey data, and the broadcast advertising based on it, was anonymous, and engagement was superficial. Not so with digital data services and platforms like Facebook that know SO MUCH MORE and kept audiences ‘captive’ through digital engagement algorithms and features. Lots more ads to serve that way. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether these experiences are good for us psychologically or politically, but as a commercial digital marketer, I’m concerned about how these platforms have relegated the treatment of consumer data to commercial ends. Google’s “Don’t be Evil” was a nice idea, but clearly an easy-to-understand standard needs to be set (in law) and adhered to for people to trust that their digital interactions are at least nominally fair, let alone under their control.
New services like DuckDuckGo and You.com are part of an effort to ‘level the playing field’ between consumers and digital platforms…and inject more privacy into the process. It’s too early to tell if they will succeed — but I have my doubts. The unavoidable truth is that the more data I have, the more money I can make — and I doubt digital marketers will be enthused by relatively inferior insight-driven ad placements. Certainly the digital advertising model of the past twenty years or so is adjusting and will have to adjust more. So how can we architect a system that helps platforms, advertisers, and users? Allow each individual more control over the amount of targeting they will accept for the services they receive for free. And MUCH more control over the same for services they pay for.
We should change the framing of this debate from “who owns the data?” to “how transparent are these transactions?” Platforms have a right to use consumer data, if consumers allow, to benefit their advertising sales and product features. Consumers have a right to determine what to share, and what the trade offs are. We need radical transparency of sorts — a “nutrition label” for data usage on your favorite platforms — with a ceiling on how much can be shared. Ironically, I think where Meta is heading with its new guidelines will start to establish that ceiling, as that business applies its own research findings about where its platform harms people…into common-sense limitations on advertising opportunities. And the term “value exchange” becomes more of a mantra for everyone involved…especially digital marketers. By the way, I’ve been averaging over 15,000 steps each day for the past couple months…a data point I share with Fitbit.
