Backtracking on our digital footprints

I was re-reading that excellent White Paper by Xtract, that Alan discussed two weeks ago, about Social Advertising Intelligence. It is really a must-read for anyone reading our blog and its free.. Anyway, I was looking at that diagramme on page 5 that shows the digital footprint, and how it is created. There are four primary inputs into the digital footprint. First there is the traditional "segmentation" principles and data, ie demographics. These can be acquired from third parties. They are the best known but the least useful of the four inputs. We have almost no control of demographic data being collected or used (ie our address or marital status or age are usually rather easy to find from public sources).

The second input is values and attitudes data. So this is the more psychographic data that can be collected about customers, say that if we subscribe to a hunting magazine, we may be interested in the outdoors, and perhaps support a politician who is for gun rights or hunting rights etc. We infer from values and attitudes and it helps give better actionable marketing input into our customers. This data is also available from third parties and is better than mere demographics. But it is not very accurate and powerful.

The third ingredient is the personal behaviour data. Best example is Amazon book activities. What books do you buy, or what books do you look at, tell very much about your interests. Not yet perfect data for everything, but far better than just grouping us by our demographics or even our values and attitudes. We can collect digital footprints potentially from every digital activity we do - consider the dozens of cookies loaded onto your computer every week even if you purge them frequently. This is very powerful on a personal level - marketing to Tomi Ahonen for example rather than to Alan Moore, even though we both share similar demographics, men of almost the same age and education levels, etc; and even if we share so much of the same values and attitudes that we co-author a blog. Still, I can bet you Alan won't be looking for any books about Formula One racing, his sports passions are with rugby. He'd look for a motorcycle book far before any book about cars that I might like; but we both like James Bond of course.. Some things just have to be, isn't it so..

But note how Amazon has already moved beyond selling me books that I like, to using other people's profiles, and building on the digital power of those footprints. They can now look at other people who like what I like, and find items I have not seen, but the others have bought. This is now the power of capitalizing on the digital footprints. So for example in my telecoms books that I often browse on Amazon, I also often get new suggestions by Amazon. It has a profile of me, and profiles of others who are "very much like Tomi" and then makes suggestions based on those profiles.

That is still "only" behaviour based digital footprints and capitalizing on them.

The last, newest, and least understood of the four elements, is social context. What Xtract calls Social Interactions in the White Paper. This is not what I consume, but with whom. So if I see a new DVD special collection about James Bond, I'd know to share that with Alan. Even though Alan Moore's profile (motorcycles, rugby, marketing, technology and James Bond) is not very similar to mine (cars, Formula One, telecoms, technologoy and James Bond), because I shared the link with Alan, now there is a social context for us. THIS is the newest tool in the personalization toolbox. This is the least understood element in marketing. It means, that for those who want to achieve a competitive advantage in the area of digital footprints, this is the most promising avenue. This is what Xtract writes about the power of Social Interactions and digital footprints:

The best opportunities in behavioural marketing come from utilizing the

social networks

of the users. Social networks are about interaction between people and they can be used to answer questions on where, how and with whom people communicate. Social networking services, such as Facebook and MySpace, have an oil well of information. This information is used already to target advertisement to users. However, according to JupiterResearch analyst Kevin Heisler, the targeting potential is used still very inefficiently and there is huge potential in creating and analyzing campaigns that utilize the inherent strengths of these interconnected social networks.

This is the most rapidly evolving part of customer analytics. To use an airplane analogy, this is jet engines in the 1950s. If you were Boeing, building commercial airliners, and didn't understand jet engines, soon you'd be out of business. That is what we also advise here at Communities Dominate blog. If you are intersted in digital communities, then you most likely also want to understand what your communities are doing. Demograpics are the "worst" level of actionable information; nearly useless. Sociographic info is only slightly better. Behaviour-based info gets useful, but the most powerful info is the social context. If you haven't read the White Paper, go get it now..

Comments

[Tim]

Dear Tomi
Your blog raises an avenue for me to ask a question that might get answered by you or others as writing to Amazon I feel might get "lost in the post". The facility "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" has always been a useful facility and not only for books but also music.

That said I have noticed an anomaly this week where the core book researched throws up a list of books under "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" that also includes the same book published by another publishing house under a different title.

So:
1) are customers unaware that they are the same book?
or
2) is the service actually showing books connected in the broader list and not related to the main title searched?

3) how "truthful" is the list actually?

As ever in research you always wish for "clean data" but it just might not always be the case at Amazon. Is their algorithm stretching the true nature of the marketing service?

Regards
Tim

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Tim

I hadn't noticed that myself, but I would guess this is an anomaly in an industry of enormous quantity of titles.

I would expect that Amazon cannot have anyone go and personally check what all their engine delivers. So when they add new titles to the catalogue and it eventually has the same title published a competitor publisher, and eventually those ratings result in the match-ups.

I would also guess, that this is relatively rare, that most authors, most titles, most publishers, tend to remain within the same companies, so for the book to be re-released under a modified title (and thus "fool" the Amazon engine) is probably quite infrequent.

Nonetheless, the reader needs to be aware, and careful not to buy the same book twice, ha-ha. I have personally a couple of times come to the conclusion, reading the beginning of a (fiction) book, that ouch, I've read this book before..

Also, I obviously have nothing to do with Amazon other than having my books available there, so I don't "know" any of the above, only that I've been observing them for many years now..

Thanks for writing Tim,

Tomi :-)