Fighting Fire with Fire: The War Against Misleading Data
Spoiler alert: bots, cyborgs, sock puppets and trolls has a bad side, and it is BAD.
As we all know, data collection is one of the main aspects of analytics and efficient development of any successful business plan. According to Forbes, “data management market is projected to increase by nearly 60% from 2020 to 2025, from $78 billion to $123 billion”.
If these numbers seems impressive to you, imagine how frightened business owner are when they learned that during 2017, over 50% of ALL internet traffic was accounted by bots. In other words, the amount of money spent on un-relevant leads, fake data, and manipulated clicks puts all organizations, especially sophisticated data-driven organizations in grave danger.
In our worst nightmares, we do not dare to dream what would be the consequences of building a campaign on false data. It is impossible. Much like a chef won’t attempt to bake a chocolate cake given celery, peanut butter, and cream-cheese as ingredients, marketers can’t find insights out of nothing, it is doomed for disaster.
It is our responsibility to question as much as we can and confirm the validility of the sources of our data. No one, marketers included, can’t trust blindly whatever they find on the vast wilderness of the internet’s platforms.
By all means, the data we find, the pure, hidden truths are forever sacred and will remain such. With that being said, the growing impact of site visits, ad clicks, form fills, sign-ups, chat requests and page engagements that are generated from bots and fake users, which ultimately results in false data, forces us to dig deeper in our search for veracity.
Check your sources, confirm their intentions, collaborate with bodies who have mutual interests. That is our only way to reveal truth as we journey through the toxic forests of false data.
