Lesson #2 Continued: Monetizing Data

Lesson #2 from my recent The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI, August, 2008) keynote presentation covered "monetizing data." What I want to do on this post is to expand on that thought by providing some examples of how web 2.0 companies monetize data.

Monetizing Data: Targeting


"Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time at the right price" has always been the operating mantra of the world of Marketing. The goal of web or online marketing goes one step further: to deliver a single ad that compels the consumer to take action. And the web can leverage the wealth of sub-transactional and transactional data to create finely-focused behavioral targeting categories that help achieve this monetization objective.

Targeting is probably the most common way that web companies monetize data. Some companies make money via subscriptions and others aggregate and sell their data to businesses, but the focus of this posting is to discuss monetizing data via improved targeting.

Targeting and Analytics are really just different sides of the same coin:

• Targeting tells you what message to deliver to what audience.
  
• Analytics tells you what you can do to improve your targeting effectiveness.
  

The Analytics-to-Targeting relationship is a closed loop process; improved measurability (from analytics) yields improved relevance and audience insights (for targeting) and so on. Unfortunately, many web companies really don't understand or respect this linkage. They offer very compelling targeting products, but don't spend equal effort to offer very compelling analytic products that help to measure and optimize targeting effectiveness. Sort of like having a big block '68 Camaro and forgetting to put a dashboard or steering wheel on that baby!

Until next time! Decision Support 2.0