I’m speaking of online data harvested through apps, websites, hardware (such as phones/streaming devices).
I mean if multiple versions of the same harvested data are being sold, wouldn’t the value decrease because of the competition? When it comes to aggregate data, how much financial value can there really be in knowing that a million office workers just clicked on the same cat meme?
How does the quantity of time and expense toward “personalization” not simply overshadow the return, given that no one can click on even a small percentage of those numerous ads, let alone buy the shit being advertised?
It just seems like there would come a time when the value of user data is sucked dry, or at least significantly decreased.
I think we could run in the same effect as energy have, when a new source of energy is found, it’s not reduce any energy use, it actually increases the use of it because is now cheaper.
With more data, more companies that use statistical analysis to processes it are going to pop up, new uses for that data is found and more data is going to be needed.
I work in insurance, with insurance bonds, nowadays the underwriters check not only the financial information of the company buying the policy, but also the personal and financial information of the executives, directors and their families. We didn’t went so far 10 years ago because it was expensive, in the future, maybe we even add employees and their families on the underwriting assessment too.
Yeah, I could see the financial value dropping, with businesses less willing to pay as much for harvested data, but I don’t see a point in time where they don’t attempt harvest every last piece of data on the off chance somebody wants it though. Advertisers paid insane amounts of money for targeted information, but even Google’s seen a huge contraction in their advertising revenue.
Doesn’t mean they aren’t frantically trying to harvest data more aggressively (just recently tried to bake it into the internet itself), just that our data is getting cheaper.