The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) created the Data-Driven Marketing Institute. The...
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) created the Data-Driven Marketing Institute. The institute will do research about data-driven marketing practices in the hopes of educating the public and avoiding needless regulation, said the institute’s website (http://xrl.us/bnucn3). “There seems to be a…
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lot of fearmongering out there that is just inaccurate,” DMA CEO Linda Woolley said during a news conference Monday. “It’s time to correct these mischaracterizations.” The DMA hopes to contribute at least $1 million to the institute, Woolley said. The initiative was inspired by events over the last six months, including two congressional investigations and “wild statements out of the FTC,” including Chairman Jon Leibowitz saying that buying a deep fryer online could affect a person’s ability to get health insurance, she said. Such examples “don’t make any sense, and they're absolutely not happening,” Woolley said. The institute hopes to combat such statements through, “first and foremost,” research on the economic impact of and consumer attitudes toward data-driven marketing, and then through consumer education on what data-driven marketing is and how consumers can choose to share their information, she said. “An educated consumer really is our best customer.” Woolley predicted the research will indicate that consumers generally understand the tradeoffs of data-driven marketing and are happy to make those tradeoffs to gain the benefits of targeted advertising. “Everybody’s concerned about privacy” as a general issue, she said when asked about the prevalence of privacy concerns. If people were really concerned about their privacy, “you would see them voting with their feet” by discontinuing use of devices and services that collect their information, and lobbying their representatives for increased consumer protections, she said. That’s not happening, she said: “People aren’t marching on Congress,” and consumers continue to use the technologies that collect their data. “There is a line” between data practices that are not intrusive and those that are, she said, and, as an advertiser, “you don’t want to be in that creepy zone.” In the U.S. market, advertisers learn from each others’ mistakes and avoid data-driven marketing practices deemed “creepy” by consumers, she said, so the marketplace “corrects for those things instantly.”