According to some data brokers, I’m a married woman in her mid-50s with a master’s degree earning enough money to make a solid down payment on a nice townhouse in New York City. Ad buyers who purchase data blindly will be sad to find out that I’m not a fancy lady; I’m just a millennial dude who relies on ad tech swag for a third of my wardrobe.
Data aggregators collect so much information on so many people that their predictions are bound to misfire periodically. But according to a May 2018 survey conducted by Lotame, most US marketers have confidence in the third-party data they purchase.
About two-thirds of respondents were somewhat confident in the demographic data they buy. However, just one-fifth were very confident in this data.