My personal data belongs to me and I’m the only person who controls it.
How I wish I could say that and it actually be true. The sad reality is, not only do I not own my personal data — I’m not entirely sure what personal data about me exists, where it’s stored or how it’s being used.
What we like, what we shop for, our email addresses, the fact that we’re about to start a family or buy a car — it all has value to marketers, who use this information to present us with ‘targeted’ advertising. Although it might sound like it’s for our benefit, it’s far from perfect.
Ever looked at a pair of shoes on the internet and then had them follow you around the internet, for days on end? Even though you were just browsing, or had actually bought them already? Probably everyone has experienced this form of online stalking at some point. I’ve certainly felt uncomfortable on many occasions because, after all, a site about mountain climbing shouldn’t know about my love for colourful trainers.
The fact that this targeting is far from perfect doesn’t discourage advertisers from collecting our data whenever they can. Then, by claiming they hold ‘detailed’ profiles of individuals, companies can charge more for their ad space.
A good example is Facebook. When we use Facebook we knowingly give them our name, email and location. But actually, Facebook is getting much more than this. By analysing every single comment and like that we leave behind, Facebook enriches our profiles to infer everything from our interests to our emotional state. If you thought Facebook was a free service, think again. We’re giving away a hefty amount of extremely personal and valuable data. And the recent revelation that Facebook told advertisers it could identify “insecure” teens “in need of a confidence boost”, and target them with products and messages they’d be particularly susceptible to, shows they can’t be trusted with it.
If Facebook is valued at a staggering $100 billion, but its assets are worth only $7 billion, where is the other $93 billion coming from? In a nutshell, it’s the perceived value of the data they’re sitting on — and guess whose data that is? Yours.
Fortunately, people are starting to say no to data mining and irrelevant advertising. And they’re doing it in an all-or-nothing way: ad blocking. Ad blocking is on the rise, and has been for some time now. With 16% of UK adults using an ad blocker on a regular basis, publishers and advertisers are slowly beginning to realise they may have crossed the line with their pop-ups and self-playing videos. But it’s not just the annoyance of being interrupted that’s causing people to wipe their screens free of ads. 30% of ad block users point to security concerns as a motivator for using ad blockers (according to the PageFair 2017 Global Adblock Report).
Some may call ad blocking a ‘modern-day protection racket’, as the former culture secretary has done, while also branding ad block users as ‘selfish’. But if the use of ad blockers were to be made illegal, then millions of people would become criminals overnight. The truth is that people simply want to enjoy an uninterrupted digital experience, and limit how much of their data they are sharing.
Currently, everyone is losing. Brands are losing trust, (because of the digital disruption caused by people’s data being passed on to whoever wants it), publishers are losing advertising revenue (because people are blocking or ignoring their ads), advertisers are losing a potentially valuable way to communicate with potential customers, and people are left with a poorer digital experience.
If the industry doesn’t start thinking straight, they’ll soon be mourning the past, when they used creativity to win us over, rather than churn out lazy and impersonal campaigns. As we see it, the only way out of this situation is to hand control back to people. For this to happen, people need to be given the ability to decide what information they do and do not want to share with brands and advertisers. By moving in this direction, brands will win back trust, and people will once again feel safe online — without any shoes stalking them.
If you haven’t already, download the people.io app now and start taking back control of your data
