Well at least for your competitors it is.

So many companies that I speak to have no idea around their marketing data, including web analytics and sometimes even CRM. The reality is that the biggest fundamental shift in communications and customer engagement in the next 5 years will be around the ownership of your customers data. The ability to target the right message at the right time has been the marketer holy grail. This is becoming a reality, however with every upside, there is a downside, and in this case, the downside is that it is not just you who wants or owns the data.

Our world is changing faster than we realise, across the board, be you a marketer, publisher or agency. The lines are becoming blurred, marketers are behaving like publishers in many instances, publishers have always had a marketer slant, however this is becoming even more enhanced. The questions is why? And why should businesses care?

The reason is that marketers and publishers are realising that they need to know not only who their customers are, but to make sure that they own the data. So many of them are running “free” software on their systems, not fully understanding the privacy and conditions of usage, which means that often the companies whom they are using, are in turn using the data for financial gain. In some cases even when the service is not free, the ownership of the data is not clear. Ad networks, ad exchanges and analytics systems are looking to aggregate content and in many cases resell it. The acronym “there is no such thing as a free lunch” is now truer than ever.

Enhanced performance through better targeting and segmentation means more profit and more clients. And why not...as a marketer would you not want to know that you can purchase access to a potential client who has expressed clear behavioural or actual intent for your product category. You would also probably be willing to pay more, ...a lot more, as your conversion rate would be higher and the return on investment better than other channels. The market will ultimately dictate the price, however it will be a market where you may be competing not only for new customers but to maintain your current which you may argue is already the case. The difference will be that your competition could know everything you do and maybe more, and logic dictates that you will eventually lose those customers.

There are more and more players entering the market, with the advent of ad exchanges and more fluid data management systems and better computing power and technologies. Marketers and publishers need to understand not just the technology and what it does, but what that holds for the future. The areas that companies are most vulnerable are ad serving, analytics and social media. Companies need to understand what they are using technologies for, how it is benefiting them and where their data is. A good example is reputation management tools, which everyone is buying into to understand how social media is engaging with their brands and products. However who owns the data – you or the agency you are using, or is it the actual technology supplier?

If you do not make sure that the data is yours, in time your customer will belong to somebody else. Ignorance is no longer an excuse...