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Numberly’s Thibault Meunier Explains Why Data is Essential

During our stay in San Francisco, we had the pleasure of attending a seminar on data marketing by Thibault Meunier, CEO of Numberly, a company in the French 1000mercis group.

The emergence of data

Since the late 1990s, the quantitative explosion of digital data has forced players in the digital market to find new ways of seeing and analyzing the world. The aim was to define new orders of magnitude for the capture, storage, sharing and use of data.

This is how the Big Data was born – a concept that enables the storage of large amounts of information on a digital platform. Big data can also be defined as a very large data set that no traditional data management tool can effectively deal with. Indeed, we create about 2.5 trillion bytes of data every day!

This information can come from anywhere: messages, web browsing histories, geolocation, shopping transactions, financial transactions, and much more. Web giants such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook were among the first to use big data, whereas data marketing is the application of big data for more efficient marketing.

Data-based warfare

Two main types of weapons are used by companies to fight on the market battlefield:

  1. The product itself, and
  2. The quality of the customer relationships.

Data is an essential element in maintaining effective customer relationships, yet is mostly hidden by major brands such as Facebook or Google. However, it is widely used.

Acquiring Data

How do companies acquire data on Internet users and make money from it?

Data generation can be done by simply clicking on a page or even flashing a QR Code with a phone.

Let’s take Google as an example to illustrate the three phases of the process:

  1. Help the user for free by allowing him/her to search using the Google input bar.
  2. Selling advertising relative to the search performed in Phase 1.
  3. Introduce a competitor that will compete with the customer Google sold the ad to in order to raise the bids on relevant keywords using Google’s AdWords platform.

Where do companies get data?

There are different places where companies can get data:

By obtaining user locations thanks to the mobile GPS units: Companies are able to know which locations users have visited and thus direct advertising according to the location.

Through connected devices at home: Amazon has piloted a remote control module that allows users to add foods to their grocery list and order them automatically with Amazon Fresh service. Similar functionalities can be provided by Amazon’s Alexa and OK Google.

Retail: Stores are testing grounds for virtual assistants, customer relationship management (CRM) loyalty card systems and electronic labels, such as Kiwapp application.

Prices are automatically updated to correspond with those featured on store websites. Thus, consumers can have more information about the products they buy.

These places are truly data battlefields, because companies are fighting a war to get their hands the most data. Some companies are less data-rich than others. Uber, for example, is much more data-rich than any other taxi company, since it records the location of its users. In the same way, Tesla has a competitive advantage with their ultra-connected vehicles, and they know 100% of their customers, as well as the locations they travel to. Even though they sell far fewer vehicles than their competitors, they are very rich in data, much more so than competing brands that are more established than they are. By knowing their users, Tesla is better able to satisfy its customer-base, developing products and services that meet their needs.

The disadvantage of being a data-poor company can, however, be easily overcome by using QR codes and connected devices. The only disadvantage being that, to create data, it is necessary to create value for the consumer, i.e. a real reason for using the QR code or the connected device.

Interaction data

Non-PII data is impersonal data. This means that this data cannot be used to identify an individual, but is rather based on the interactions that a person has with an application or website. Companies that consume interaction data identify users by means of cookies. Interaction data is stored in databases called DMPs, or Data Management Platforms.

Larger companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon share interaction data with cookies as basis.

Personalized advertising

Interaction data can be auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder, so advertising banners are displayed according to the type of interaction used. Before buying, the brand differentiates potential customers from uninterested users, or restricts ads to a certain category of people. For example, several categories are established according to age. Data auctions are managed by computer-based exchanges, and all such operations take place in the 100 milliseconds before a page is displayed after a user arrives on an application. This is called programmatic advertising.

Data is valuable and companies are trying to collect it on all fronts. Naturally, the question arises: “What impact is this having on our privacy?” Indeed, it is important to be interested in the subject, because the ethical limit of these data recoveries is not clear at the moment.