Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez

Author:Antonio García Martínez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joosr Ltd

Facebook and Google are essentially the new post office

We’ve concluded that Facebook are not doing anything particularly untoward with your data, but let’s investigate the issue of digital marketing a little further. First of all, let’s make one thing clear: companies you’ve probably never even heard of—Acxiom, Experian, Epsilon, Merkle, and Neustar, for example—have been collecting your personal data for years, long before the rise of the internet. Since the dawn of marketing in the early 1960s, these companies have been tracking all of consumer America. They know your name, address, education level, rough income, living arrangement, and spending patterns, and they rent out this information to marketers looking to tailor their campaigns toward demographic archetypes.

This nationwide surveillance apparatus came to exist through direct-mail advertising. You know those annoying pamphlets you get through your mailbox by the truckload? That’s a result of these companies. And now they are launching this information into digital media with what is called “data on-boarding.” In short, on-boarding helps bridge the gap between offline and online data, enabling marketers to leverage customer information stored in their data warehouses for more accurate media targeting. Companies like those mentioned above can then partner with media publishers like Facebook or Google to connect this online and offline data, essentially delivering advertisements based on what you have been buying in physical shops and stores.

Facebook and Google are acting like more efficient versions of the post office: your online user ID is a far better way of reaching you than your physical address. They’ve found a persistent and effective pseudonym for every person online, and connected that through companies such as Neustar and Acxiom to the real-life you, who rolls into Starbucks every morning for a double espresso. This information is then sold (and resold) millions of times a day to whoever is willing to pay for it, which explains why, when you pop out and buy a coffee using your customer reward card, an ad will come up on Facebook for Starbucks, or any other cafe it can connect you with.

As companies that have been building up a personal profile on each individual are now taking part in data on-boarding, information on where you spend your money is being connected with your online social media persona. So, while Facebook might not directly be tracking you, it does use your online ID to sell to marketers who use this information to target advertisements to you (via Facebook).

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