Data Handling and Ethics

Global digitization is encompassing more and more of our daily lives and interactions. As a result of this we are leaving behind us with our every digital interaction ever more detailed information about our preferences, personalities, political inclinations as well as our personal and professional aspirations. As a result of this the business community demands for this data are growing (James, 2020), this data enables businesses to more accurately target their advertising and even personalization of adverts.

This targeting of advertising helps to ensure that the right people are getting the right message. Digitally this means that you are likely to be making more of the right impressions which will increase your click through rates and site interactions with the aim being to get people to spend their money on your products. However, this can become exploitative and unethical when businesses target specific consumers via advertising for harmful or potentially harmful products, with low quality products or with high prices to consumers who are unable to or not well enough informed to make rational choices about a product or service (Rittenburg & Parthasarathy, 1997).

Looking into a Now TV account (I must be the only person on the planet not to have one) as there was some content I was interested in watching I have found that every page I open now sports a Now TV advert.

Deciding that I want to be more helpful to the environment and to use less paper I recently investigated the purchase of a cool bit of tech called the ReMarkable tablet I experienced the same thing.

This is kind of creepy right so how do they do it?

So how is all of this data actually used? How do the clever marketers make sure that they turn the data they have into something of value for the organisations they work for?

Advertising has as an industry unsurprisingly always been keen to get to the crux of human behavior in a neigh on obsessive way. Advertisers are now able to call upon artificial intelligence (AI) systems convert and interpret vast amounts of complex, ambiguous information into in depth insight into market behavior (Jercinovic, 2020).

Own a smart speaker like a Google home or and Amazon Alexa. Did you know that they contain a microphone which is always on and are sending data back to google and amazon respectively? Alexa will sometimes record you without your knowledge, because she thought you said her name (Keach, 2020).

The more we understand people as individuals, the better the targeting of marketing collateral can be as well as the becoming increasingly personal and persuasive. However, as we get new insights into customers it does raise the question about our moral obligations towards those we hold the data on.

So with all of this information at the fingertips of marketers (and you thought they just choose the colours of brochures)

There must be some ethical consideration that marketers need to consider (when not looking at colour pallets). We are surely responsible for how we use the data that we collect? How we store it?

As it turns out we are and the ethics have now been taken out of our hands by legislation. There is a new(ish) bit of legislation which the EU released called GDPR (Not to be confused with a former soviet state) which legislates how we need to use data.

• Collect data. It needs to be in a fair and transparent way
• You cannot collect more data than you need
• How data is processed. It can only be used how it was agreed upon when provided
• Data held must be accurate and up to date
• Data must be held confidentially

(“What is the General Data Protection Regulation? Understanding & Complying with GDPR Requirements in 2019”, 2020)

If you have been under a rock for the last 2 years and fancy learning a bit more about GDPR there is a video below to explain it a bit more!

So as is often the case legislation has caught up with technology for the time being. But as technology continues to progress, marketers will have to continue to consider the ethics of how they use data which has been collected, even if GDPR does not cover the future tech being used. Marketers need to look at legislation such as GDPR not just as legislation but also consider the spirit of it when collecting handling and using data to ensure the organizations they work for aren’t besmirched in a data related ethical scandal (see Facebook/Cambridge Analytica). New tech for business which can be used at home could pose new ethical questions. Microsoft HoloLens’ mixed reality could allow Microsoft to see into your home and learn about your private life.

References:

James, N. (2020). Success in Data Handling Must Be Guided by Ethics. Retrieved 30 January 2020, from https://www.cmswire.com/information-management/success-in-data-handling-must-be-guided-by-ethics/

Jercinovic, J. (2020). The Ethics of Using AI in Advertising. Retrieved 31 January 2020, from https://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ethics-ai-advertising/309535

Keach, S. (2020). How to stop Alexa spying on you – and make sure strangers can’t hear your private chats. Retrieved 1 February 2020, from https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9658182/amazon-echo-spying-alexa-how-to-stop-listening/

Rittenburg, T., & Parthasarathy, M. (1997). Ethical implications of target market selection. Journal of Macromarketing, 17(2), 49-65.

What is the General Data Protection Regulation? Understanding & Complying with GDPR Requirements in 2019. (2020). Retrieved 31 January 2020, from https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-understanding-and-complying-gdpr-data-protection