A fascinating ESOMAR Webinar – The (Still) Unfulfilled Promise of Secondary Data? – took place September 9, 2020 arranged and moderated by Reg Baker, Regional Ambassador to North America and Consultant to ESOMAR’s Professional Standards Committee. So why a different title for this event?
In setting up the session, Reg noted:
- The technologies and tools required to access, combine, and analyse these (secondary) data already exist, and marketers and advertisers are using them on a broad scale. But within the market research sector the promise of so-called “big data” remains unfulfilled.
- We will consider how two values that comprise the foundation of market research -– validity and respect for the privacy of those whose data we process – need to be rethought in this new context.
The speakers involved are two of the most experienced in the use of secondary data arena but with very different backgrounds. Rex Briggs, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board, Marketing Evolution, has been a leading vendor of ROI measurement and optimization based primarily on secondary data sources for many years. Dr Sara Jordan acts as Policy Counsel, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics at The Future of Privacy Forum and has immersed herself in the data/analytics “ethics” arena at the highest levels her whole career.
The appropriate context?
Before highlighting each speaker’s key points, I suggest there is a fundamental and crucial context to consider when addressing this secondary data usage arena. There is certainly no one in the research business than can ignore the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data “arrangement” which many data/marketing experts concluded were instrumental in the election of the current occupant of the White House and the departure of Great Britain from the EU. Also, I do not believe you have to be a career media researcher or a Brit living in the US to incorporate this underpinning especially as the ESOMAR Professional Standards Committee is planning to establish “Secondary Data Usage Guidelines”.
The content
Rex Brigs recalled the 1998 promise of a personal relationship between marketers and consumers in the internet age as reflected by Wired in its May issue that year- The NEW You. No Google or Facebook then. He noted that this data and intelligence industry has grown to ~$5 trillion today along with massive tracking capabilities that are generally unchecked, “with walled gardens still collecting and abusing individual’s data and using it as competitive barriers to new entrants.” Walled garden data monopolies are clearly used to “personally target advertising to fuel their revenues.”
After reminding the audience of the scary means to check their “collected” personal on-line data, Rex shared that Marketing Evolution, as a major secondary data user and analytics company, has a fundamental concern. “Across the various secondary data sources and subsequent mashups, is an individual’s data actually reflecting the person, the household, the street or even the neighbourhood?” He noted that even with today’s computer technology hashing the array of data and executing analytics in real-time remains impossible.
He did acknowledge the significant compound risks not only concerning any individual’s data but critically to the insights and findings from data analysis due to potential imprecision. To the question, “Are we doing very precise things with very imprecise (secondary) data?” Rex posited that the analytics based on typical data mashups were more precise than the propensity scores from primary quality data but admittedly had a long way to go. This raises the parallel concern of the validity of the analytic models.
In concluding, he posed a central question: “What will data look like in eight years from now in 2028?
- Consumers will have direct control of all their data and be compensated for it.
- Big data media companies will be even bigger and more control consumer data.
Dr Sara Jordan reminded us of the risks versus the benefits of research notably in view of the trends on privacy and their effects on ethical data usage and the consequent importance of professional bodies to establish Ethical Guidelines regarding use of any personal data. She underlined that benefits will only accrue from research if:
- Performed well
- Presented for review and accepted by peers
- Translated into policy and/or action
And when using human data, the research is:
- Reviewed by appropriate review boards when that is required
- Abides by methodological conventions and reporting requirements
- Is written with clarity in accessible formats
- Abides by the norms of publication ethics
Sara emphasized the special considerations required when using secondary data. She believes the cornerstones of this dimension are: “Abides by terms of consent and purpose limitations”; and “Respects the limits of the data sharing or data use agreements, including transfer, limitation, and destruction of data.”
All of which raises the difficulty in developing Guidelines, in her terms, “risk assessments”, that assure the objectivity and independence in evaluation of any project whether it is the data itself, the data use or the analytic models used.
Key considerations moving forward
Further points raised for consideration of the ESOMAR Secondary Data Usage Guidelines Committee initiative included:
- Ethical Standards must account for the scale secondary data and can potentially take principles from primary research.
- Has the GDPR made the behemoths stronger, and what is its role in any Guidelines?
- Do the ends justify the means?
- Any Standards or legal agenda needs to encourage an ecosystem of mutual trust between all parties involved.
- Data/analytics users need to be more thoughtful in leaving people out of marketing campaigns.
- Guidelines must have serious teeth with substantial consequences to be of any value to any of the parties involved.
The catch-22?
If we believe it is neither in the interests of advertisers nor consumers to be involved whatsoever with the often toxic environments of some of the social media sites that provide secondary data to research vendors (whether anonymized or not), should researchers be using the data from such sites?
As Charlie Warzel, New York Times, wrote September 3, 2020, in his article, “Mark Zuckerberg Is the Most Powerful Unelected Man in America.”
“Facebook’s news dominance and mercurial distribution algorithms led to a rise of hyper-partisan pages and websites to fill the gaps and capitalize on the platform’s ability to monetize engagement, which in turn led to a glut of viral misinformation and disinformation that Facebook has been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to adequately police.” (Source – ed.)
I would respectfully suggest that ‘Secondary Data Source Environment Acceptability’ must be included as a third dimension of the “values” component posited by Reg for any ESOMAR Secondary Data Usage Guidelines.
ESOMAR’s challenge?
We are chasing the holy grail of understanding the elements that drive ROI and/or key decisions for any endeavour and tweaking them in real-time, especially in a digital media world that provides a tsunami of secondary data to potentially help drive those decisions. However, the validity and ethical elements of using and analyzing that data along with the plethora and influence of any misinformation surrounding the potential audience flowing through any digital data source becomes even more concerning.
To watch the webinar on demand just click here and fill in the registration form (ed.).
