Marketers have long mined consumer information – ranging from public records data about how much a person’s house is worth to surveys about whether they are married or have children – to send direct mailings and make telephone pitches to people most likely to buy their products. Even the “mad men” drew on panel-based research about the television shows people watched, the radio stations they listened to and the newspapers and magazines they read.
Big data’s renewed heft in the advertising industry, however, came partly
as a result of a concurrent disruption of the
advertising business as smartphones spread and consumers digitised their
lives.
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