The brand with the best customer data often wins the marketing game. But as Apple’s new iOS privacy features limit user tracking, some sources of consumer data are drying up. It may feel like marketers have to trade off behavioral targeting for privacy, but this trade-off can be broken. Marketers can have their cake and eat it too.
First let’s look at the most common digital targeting approach used by marketers whose first party data set doesn’t provide the scale they need to meet growth objectives.
Look-Alikes
Unfortunately, anyone can create a look-alike audience. A company with data on one shopper could use a few demographics from that person, apply it to the U.S. population and call it a look-alike model – not that you’d want to use it. But the point is that there is no standard or hurdle to use the term. In this extreme example, it’s easy to spot the flaw. With a sample of one, there is no way to know if the audience is any better than random selection.