Hey, Lawmaker: Marketing Moves Today's Commerce, and Data Moves Today's Marketing

I'll start this blog off with a disclosure: I'm a member of the Direct Marketing Association, serve and have served on various DMA committees, and I count the Digital Advertising Alliance and other data-driven marketing firms among my clients. In short, my livelihood depends on data-driven marketing. Members of Congress, and even the White House, in good measure, seem to forget or ignore that their very own elections to office depended on the flow of information about citizens and individuals and population segments to inform their campaigns. Their respective elections prove that data and marketing in concert are very effective, especially for incumbents. Yet listen to a few among our leaders, and you'd think data-driven marketing is a consumer privacy problem begging for a government solution. How they (some of them) ignore 40+ years of self-regulation success in data-driven marketing; U.S. leadership in information technology and its data-driven marketing application (they are not coincidental); and the economic powerhouse of jobs, sales and tax revenue that is created by data exchange for marketing purposes. Research Proves Our Case ... AgainIn November, DMA and its Data-Driven Marketing Institute announced "The Value of Data" Study (opens as a pdf), which documented the economic impact: The data-driven marketing economy added $156 billion in revenue to the U.S. economy that fueled more than 675,000 jobs in 2012 alone. (Importantly, the study also provides state-by-state economic impact.) The full study is available here. This past week, DAA announced results of its own commissioned research which focused on the value of digital advertising derived from data exchange—and its comparison to general ads online. The study reported that availability of cookies to facilitate information transfer increases the average impression price paid by advertisers by 60 percent to 200 percent. Additionally, ads for which cookie-related information was available sold for three-to-seven times higher than ads without cookies. Thus, the invisible hand of the market, once again, proves data's value. The full study is available at http://www.aboutads.info/resource/fullvalueinfostudy.pdf. We've Got Work to Do ... with our LawmakersYet President Barack Obama and Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Ed Markey (D-MA) might have Americans believe that National Security Agency surveillance of U.S. citizens, data breaches at retailers and other organizations, and data exchange to drive marketing is one big roll-up of the same issue. We know they are not. Spying by government on its own citizens is an important civil liberty issue, and while I'm not a fan of Snowden hiding out, NSA revelations deserve a full debate on its own merits and threats. Data security extends far beyond marketing—and marketers and many lawmakers agree that we need one national data protection and breach notification standard (and not 50+1). Data-driven marketing is not a problem at all, but instead a huge boon to U.S. marketing success that depends on continued innovation and fair use of information principles, which deserves government support (or at least government staying out of the way). Importing restrictive laws and regimes on data flows for marketing has the potential to ruin American commerce by killing relevance. At a time when consumers are becoming more skeptical of brands, the intelligent use of information to converse with consumers with resonance is a requirement of marketing smart today. Dumb marketing wastes resources, annoys consumers and frankly places us at a disadvantage globally. While culture around regions of the world is unique, I believe our sector-specific approach to privacy regulation based on consumer harm potential (credit, health, financial) is superior to omnibus privacy law (all personal data is the same) and has served our economy well. How terrible to find we have our own lawmakers who seem to fail to grasp the evidence. You can believe DMA, DAA and other advertising organizations are working hard to show policymakers the great value we create in the marketing profession. Politicians sense moods ... and read polling. In my next blog post, I'll look at some of the perception challenges we face with consumers. Clearly, as much as consumers "consume," marketing is not all that popular with some of them either. We have work to do with consumers, too.

Data Security

Hey, Lawmaker: Marketing Moves Today's Commerce, and Data Moves Today's Marketing

Chet Dalzell

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Chet Dalzell