In this byline in Forbes, Partnerize Chief Marketing Officer Jim Nichols writes about the value of each of these characteristics with regard to how marketers use data to make key decisions, and how the availability of richer data partner marketing is a major benefit of the channel. Read this excerpt to see how do your most frequently referenced data sets measure up on accuracy, context and relevance:
The explosion of information available to marketers is truly astounding, and one might surmise that it has led to a wholesale improvement in decision-making. I don’t think that’s the case. Certainly, some brand decisions are made more thoughtfully and with better information. But others are now being “informed” by spurious or irrelevant information, making the related decisions just as likely to be wrong, though perhaps for different reasons.
I think about the value of data in terms of accuracy, context and relevance. All three are essential. But it can be difficult to get all three in a single data set, and much of what we receive and act upon can lack one or all of these characteristics. Let’s take a look.
Accuracy
Kindergarteners might be told that there is only one right way to count. More and more marketers know better. Especially when it comes to a soft metric like an impression or a video play. Is the video “played” if it autostarts? Is it “played” if someone leaves the page after two seconds?
Banner advertising can be even trickier. Do we count the “call” for an ad to an ad server, its start of render, its completed render or whether the ad has appeared in the user’s view? Is the “view” a view if it isn’t reaching a human?
Video and banners represent just two instances where there is a great deal of ambiguity in what a number might mean. Companies have been formed to help provide common answers to questions like these. And organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) create valuable standards for these measures and develop guidelines on how things should be counted.
(Full disclosure: Partnerize is a member of IAB UK.)
Context
Context is also a vital consideration. Take growth figures. When growth is expressed as a percentage, the reader can be misled to believe that a big growth figure is more impressive than a small one.
Read the rest of the article in Forbes.
