A survey from Lotame finds 60 percent of marketers are concerned with the quality of data available from data providers/sellers. The survey featured 300 marketers in the U.S. who purchase and/or use audience data (first-, second- or third-party) in their roles.
The top reason marketers are concerned with data quality from providers/sellers was found to be the refresh rate. The data-management platform provider noted as an example that someone in the market for a new car in January might have purchased it in February and would no longer be in market in March.
Other concerns were bots, fake social profiles and other nefarious activity that can lead to bogus comments, fake clicks, incorrect bounce rates and wasted bandwidth. Marketers are further troubled by incorrect linking between a pageview and intent or motivation, which leads to broad or inaccurate categorization.
To improve data quality, marketers wanted to see:
- Transparency on data sources;
- Consistent data labeling across providers;
- The creation of universal industry standards.
Those actions were selected above changes or disclosure to refresh rate and consumer opt-out of data sharing.
Other findings:
- The majority of respondents, 65 percent, would only be willing to spend an extra five percent or more than what they’re currently spending on data buys for higher data quality. Only 25 percent would be willing to spend 10 percent or more.
- A quarter are not sure how to measure the success of their audience data purchases.
- While 57 percent of marketers say audience data is very valuable to them, only 14 percent said their audience data buys were very successful. Imprecise targeting is the number one challenge.
“It is this trend toward ‘all things data’ that has made scale a key industry driver for quite some time,” wrote Jason Downie, chief strategy officer at Lotame, in the study. “However, as the data market has reached maturity, the shortcuts that were taken to achieve scale are now undermining the quality of data available.”