Data generation

Target advertising is only possible when companies have sufficient and correct information about customers. Thanks to the numerous new technologies and social networks,  firms now have huge databanks with statistics about consumers and their preferences. Famous social networks as facebook and twitter collect data about their profiles and sell these. This huge business of data farming also uses surveys to collect information. First of all this gives them the possibility to ‘target’ their target group. And secondly it gives the possibility to eliminate wasted advertising. If they know their target audience they also know who isn’t interested in their products or services so advertising for these people is useless.  Which leads to higher profits!  What remains are some important questions : where does this data war leads to? How far are firms willing to go for perfect data ?  And not to be forgotten where do we have a say in this? What about our privacy?

Wout steenacker