ACCURACY

If you’ve ever wondered what you, as a consumer, look like to advertisers, you might have come across a way to look up your cookie footprint. Oracle’s Data Opt-Out tool, for example, allows you to see exactly what “segments” you fit into as a result of your online behavior. As you’ll learn, these segments are correct less than half the time, as you’re lumped in with groups that you shouldn’t be in, and not included in groups you really should be in. If you pair the inaccuracy of cookie segments with the fact that cookie targeting cannot tell the difference between human internet traffic and bot internet traffic, your ad spend becomes incredibly wasteful when based on cookies. That’s why we never use cookie segments, and we insist on targeting our ads (whenever possible) on real-world data (not web behavior), such as categorical purchase behavior, home address, credit score range, and so on. Digital advertising works, but only if you’re not wasting the lion’s share of your budget on inaccurate targeting. That’s why we’re the ad targeting people.