The Power of Data

While being in my position at Madden, i’ve learned a lot about data. More importantly how we use it, where we get it from and the power of using it to fine tune our creative.

A general overview of how we use data for the destinations we serve is actually simple. We serve an ad to a targeted audience. That audience is made up of people from a certain area, demographic, income and interest. Once that ad is served to them we track them through a series of retargeting ads, which in turn is tied to their cellphone location and ID. Once that cellphone id is pinged in our location and is there for more than 24 hours we can count that as a visit or a way or measuring the power of our ad and it influencing a traveler to visit our clients location. Simple right?

What I’m fascinated with is the accuracy and different types of data out there that companies collect and we have access to. I can see on my own website when people visit, what time of day and where they're from. Heck I can even reverse look up their ip addresses and pin point where they are at and that’s just from my website. We have access to spending data, location data and web and social traffic and more.

With the right information we can evolve our creative messaging and imagery to be the most effective. So the next time people complain about Facebook giving up a persons work place or some other mindless data point, just know that your information is already out there for the world to see, buy and use. Your digital footprint is deeper and longer than you can imagine.