Editorial March 12, 2016
Google and other private companies are studying how to gather and analyze personal, consumer data to market their products and services for the greatest profit.
The companies that can crunch the terabytes of personal data out there into accurate business intelligence will win: no question. But getting the right data feeds and business intelligence software that works NOW, not in the future–is still illusive.
Consumer profiling based on recent buying history is pretty straitforward for Amazon, Google, and the other big Cyber gorillas. But integrating more, separate consumer data from various sources is still not easy. SQL server does miracles to integrate various types of data across diverse systems, but ONLY with large teams and lots of human intervention on the backend of the databases. TRULY automating and integrating personal data across various database structures is still very difficult. Some companies specialize of SEEMING to integrate such data, bit many times the end result is illusion–like a magician’s slight of hand. The average person, or even business manager, does not see the manual labor. The painstaking work of analyzing each data set–and even each data field withing the database!–that happens before presentation to the business.
Yet, some high end computer firms are on thier way to using data across systems to compile consumer sketches close to reality. And SQL is fast being overrun by more adept programming languages that really do automate profiling across systems and disparate data.
The bometrics integrated facial recognition software–which the newer security and surveillance cameras use–can cross reference the biometrics images with those in other databases to identify the individuals and quickly compile additional financial, social and even political information, as well as buying habits. As mentioned in June on this website, the implications of this Cyber Technology are ENORMOUS, both for good and for bad. Companies may eventually be able to immediately gauge buy habits and preferences of individual shoppers. A digital billboard in New York City could ostensibly market to passers by based on their biometrics image and corrolated financial, consumer, and other data.
THE BOTTOM LINE
A number of Market Analysts predict multi-million-dollar profit increases for companies that can win individual loyalty for their products and services over the next 10 years. Doing that means exploiting any technology that will give them an edge over their competition. Targeted marketing based on cyber personas–built from detailed demographic, biometric, and financial data–is here to stay.
Does Cyber Space Know What I Want to Buy?