Will we run out of data to mine?

While reading the GM plant shutdown thread, I had a realization/thought that people far brighter than me have probably already thought of.  It seems to me like 99% of what is happening in the world and corporate America isn't sustainable.  Just how valuable is this "information" that all of these companies want to sell and who is buying it? 

Lets be real: they know your past 3 addresses (public) , your employers (usually public) , your income (apply for a credit card recently? everything is prefilled) , What cars you own (my own agent told me she saw where I was shopping around; matched the best price so it wasn't worth hassle to switch) , What the inside of your house looks like (Snapchat/ Pokemon go), Where I spent the night last night down to 50ft (location services), The list can go on and on. 

If anything id like them to take it a step further and look at my bank account, realize I already bought the wheels and tires I was researching. Then stop sending me nothing but targeted ads on that one item 

But just how valuable is all this information? What more/how much more data mining can we really do? 

In reply to captdownshift :

Maybe to some extent. But having a person/people in a vehicle represents a captive audience for the owner of the vehicle, and a gold mine of data that can be sold to advertisers. That's the real play in my opinion. They want to pivot from being a car company to being a tech company that makes vehicles instead of phones/tablets.

Ford's CEO is already talking about selling the data that their finance arm collects (Names, addresses, incomes, employers, etc). Imagine what advertisers might pay for even more data from individual's vehicles, and a captive audience for daily commutes to/from work that they can target ads to.

They're replying to me in threads I haven't even posted in.

They've become self aware. 

I've already been bought and sold 100 times. I won't notice one more. I'm out of E36 M3s to give.

I think we'll see a move towards people demanding more anonymity before corporate America runs out of data to mine.  It's already happening with sites like Duck, Duck, Go, people covering their laptop cameras with stickers, regular privacy updates and changes on FB, etc. 

But, regarding the data, I still think they're only scratching the surface of what can be mined.  Just a quick explanation, there's data that's collected and then the mining of that data to produce trends/targeted ads/etc.  I agree that the collection of data might reach a saturation point, but the mining of that data has a long way to go.  Adding automotive information just adds to the trending of people.  For example, Ford can sell your make, model, color, and payment type (finance or cash) data for example.  Allstate might combine that with their driving records and claims from their data and realize that people in a certain zip code, who drive green Ford trucks are more likely to have windshield damage than Ford trucks of another color.  So, they'll tweak their rates to account for that.  Then, maybe toss in Twitter posts and typical purchases from your local grocer, and they might determine that a green Ford truck driver in a certain zip code who posts on Twitter 10-20 times a day and buys sweet pickles is more likely to be a better driver, so they lower their rates.

That same type of targeted trending can be used by advertisers (probably the biggest user right now), insurance carriers, banks, etc to make all kinds of trending decisions.  The combinations to mine the data are endless.

-Rob

Wait until the dig their claws into all the DNA data that is out there now.

Oh, they can go a LOT deeper. One of the most challenging things about selling something (especially a new thing) is marketing.  All this information is the foundation of targeted marketing, the more info the more targeted, the more efficient.

A saying I heard kind of sums up the idea:   “Amazons sells things to you, Google sells you”

BTW Who thinks it’s a good idea to have an internet connected high resolution camera in your house sold and controlled by.....  FACEBOOK!!  

 I will be very surprised if they sell any number of those Portal things.

When every thing and every person is just a barcode. That's when it will stop.

It's cute you believe it's for advertising though, from what I've seen in the wikileaks data dumps, my money is on a more Minority Report style future. 

At the end of the day, it's JUST advertising.  That's it.  Very intrusive advertising, for sure, but it's all a way to get you to do or buy something.

And on that note, I honestly don't understand what that will bring to my profit sharing check- we sell almost $200B worth of stuff that we make- the value of the advertising that our customers could potentially provide is WAY less than that- probably less than the multiple billions we spend every year advertising ourselves.

But we corporate people see is FB and Google have "values" that are ginormous when mostly what they do is advertising.  Google does have products, but that's not where their value lies, and that is reflected in FB's value, too- it's their potential to reach many billions of eyes.  But that potential is advertising, which someone should find out the actual ROI on that is- as I bet it's not that great in terms of eyes to dollar ratio.

Anyway, to take advantage of the information, you must have something to "sell" (be it a real product, a candidate, or an issue).  Otherwise, the information is pretty useless.

In reply to alfadriver :

You bring up valid points about the effectiveness of the targeted ads and whether that's an efficient use of marketing $. The average American's buying power peaked in the early 70s. People today don't have as much disposable income to buy all of these things that are being advertised, so advertisers are fighting for their share of a constantly shrinking pie. That seems like that should eventually reduce the market for all of this data, unless we just continue to finance more and more of our lives which seems pretty likely as well.

Either way, I think it can definitely help your profit sharing check. The thing with selling data is that it's almost entirely profit. That's the real reason why values for FB and Alphabet are so inflated. They have very low overhead. Gathering, and compiling data doesn't require anywhere near the same level of engineering, expensive R&D, or testing to meet regulations that building cars does. It doesn't require a massive, potentially problematic supply chain, or gigantic plants filled with costly employees. It can't come back to bite you in the form of warranty costs, recalls, or regulatory fines. It's pretty immune to fluctuations in commodity pricing, taxes and tariffs imposed by whatever government is in control of the intended market.

Since governments are heavily involved, you'll have to take the red pill to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.  Remember, all I'm offering is the truth.

In reply to CJ :

What do you an ancestry and my23 are already doing? 

aircooled said:

Oh, they can go a LOT deeper. One of the most challenging things about selling something (especially a new thing) is marketing.  All this information is the foundation of targeted marketing, the more info the more targeted, the more efficient.

A saying I heard kind of sums up the idea:   “Amazons sells things to you, Google sells you”

BTW Who thinks it’s a good idea to have an internet connected high resolution camera in your house sold and controlled by.....  FACEBOOK!!  

 I will be very surprised if they sell any number of those Portal things.

This. They've barely gotten into biometrics, DNA, and what basically amounts to in-home/on-body full-time surveillance. They're far from running out of things to mine, but what might hopefully happen is that as more and more data is collected, companies will realize that advertising doesn't work as well as they assumed and therefore data isn't worth as much - especially against the Average Joe's decreasing spending power. And at that point they might back off. People are also becoming more privacy-aware at last - using DDG and VPNs more commonly, but the latter might be because of those stupid TV ads from NordVPN that make it seem like everyone is running plain HTTP over public wifi.

And to add a more helpful comment, marketing is far from the only use case for data mining/machine learning/artificial intelligence applications.  And it's far from just your personal data.  I mean, the sensor data in vehicles and other devices is invaluable.  Some data scientists that I work with have already helped companies save millions by being able to better predict equipment failures and alert of misuse of equipment.  In the logistics industry, you can save a lot of money by figuring out how to reduce downtime and fuel consumption.

In terms of personal information, it's useful in HR to help in hiring processes and in preventing employee turnover.  Businesses lose a lot of money each time they have to replace someone who leaves.  They have to train the new person and give that person time to come up to speed.  The lost productivity can be worth even a year's worth of salary.  It's a little nuts.

and this is why I am working towards a bigger boat that can cross oceans.

In reply to STM317 :

But it's not entirely profit- first you have to pay for the mechanism to gather that data, develop it, and implement it.  Then you also have to trade that with the consumers who 1) don't want that data out and 2) go as far as dropping the product, because.  And since it's being added to the massive numbers of people selling advertising data, the competition lowers the value of that data- since there are many sources for that.

And you hit the nail on the head for FB and Alphabet with the word "inflated".  At some point, investors will see that they will saturate the market and the value will plummet to the same as all the rest of the advertising media market.  

Im a Marketing Professional, so data is my life.  I don't buy into any of the conspiracy theories about the government trying to collect data on us for nefarious purposes, frankly, they don't have the money or technology.  To understand why people like me want all your data, you have to look at the changes over the past 50 years.  If I wanted to reach kids of a certain age back then, I sponsored or ran a commercial during Howdy Doody.  It was on at 8pm, it was the only option, all kids were glued to it, simple. 

Fast forward to 2018, how do I get me message to a kid like mine?  He watches some over-the-air TV with commercial, some streaming TV with and without commercials, some stuff on YouTube, listens to music on his Amazon Echo, plays video games on an old iPhone, an XBox and a Wii, shops on Amazon, goes to the mall, rides in the car past billboards...the list goes on and he is only 7!  The more I know about your habits, and your parent's habits, and you grandparent's habits and your friends habits, and your community, your peers, your social circles, your influencers, your enemies...the better I can sell to you.  And I want to know about what you already own, how long you have had it, how often you use it, how much you like it, how often you replace it, as well as where you live, where you work, where you travel, whom you are married to or dating, what you like to eat, what you drive, your fashion sense, etc etc etc.  It allows me to create an in-depth profile and more precisely target you. 

The reason is that I no longer want to advertise to a large group of people and hope you see it, I want to advertise directly to you with a message that is specific to you that satisfies a need you have at a time when you are most likely to act on it. For example, if I know that you usually stop for breakfast on your way into work at 8am, I can pop an ad onto your nav screen for that sausage biscuit you loved at your sister's house, with a discount coupon timed precisely to get you to turn left into my restaurant instead of the right you normally make into Starbucks. 

In reply to alfadriver :

Right. It's not all profit, but it's a significantly higher profit margin than the goods they manufacture. Software is cheaper than hardware. If they're going to be in the business of making automobiles, doing that profitably has to be the highest priority.  At least right now. But anything they can make from the data seems like gravy to me. Ford's finance arm is currently responsible for 1/3rd of the profits of the company. If they can start to monetize the data they already collect that number could increase substantially. If they start to design their vehicles with data collection in mind, then that number could go even higher.

There's a lot of data being sold out there, but I'm not sure that the data that car makers would be able to sell is available anywhere else. FB and Google probably don't know specifics that would be put into a loan request. They've got algorithms and AI that can analyze and guess pretty well, but they're still guesses. They probably don't know what kind of vehicle you drive (Insert vehicle specific accessory ads here), or that your car's oil change interval is almost up (Insert Valvoline ad here) or that an O2 sensor isn't updating as quickly as it should (Insert Rock Auto ad here) etc.

Have you ever seen Minority Report?   There is no end to what will be done with big data. 

The government is already partnering with Facebook and Google to assemble profiles on everybody.  Everything the government knows can be used against you if they so choose.   The metadata of every phone call is stored in that big building in Utah.  Some are recorded if the person's threat rating is high enough. 

The more laws there are the more chance you have of running afoul of laws.  Then you are a criminal.  Its way easier to control criminals than honest people.    

Oh, you aren't a criminal?  Have you ever exchanged a working stock catalytic converter for a high flow model?  Bam, you broke federal law.  Posted how much better it ran after that on the internet?  Bam,  you just admitted your crime.    Ran Mega-Squirt on a car on public roads that originally had OBD II?  Same.     You disabled an emission control device.  

Data is not just about advertising.  

Using Ford as an example, they sell 2 million cars per year. If every new car they sold was equipped with 50 sensors, the capacity for collection is mind boggling. Ford can convert every one of their customers into free data collectors with 100 million new sensors per year collecting data every minute of the day, 24/7, on every road on the planet. 

But if Ford owns the data, they can do what they want with it. Sure, they can sell it. Or they can monitor their competition. Or understand in depth how after market components perform. 

But they can also use it to improve their own engineering processes. Every component on every vehicle can be monitored in real time and real world applications. The entire Engineering process would change from being a static process on paper to a dynamic one in real time with real world performance measures. 

That’s just one example. There are countless others. 

In reply to pinchvalve :

And I work for a company that hosts some large percentage all POS data in the world.  When you shoot that ad to someone's phone just as they turn into Big Box Store, we can see if sales for whatever you were selling went up by 1, if they used your ad, etc., so you can tell that your advertising was effective for your customer.  You can then show your customer the direct sale results, justifying their spend with you.

Related screenshot from an ad that appeared on Facebook 

that headunit is linked to in the gatropod thread. They're watching us.

To those that say Government isn't interested or able to use this data: Chinese government has been requiring manufacturers of all electric cars in the country to track vehicle position 24/7 and share that info with the Chinese government.

captdownshift said:

Related screenshot from an ad that appeared on Facebook 

that headunit is linked to in the gatropod thread. They're watching us.

 

Hmm he took the screenshot about 4 min before he posted it ... he’s charging his device .. got an alarm set.............

STM317 said:

To those that say Government isn't interested or able to use this data: Chinese government has been requiring manufacturers of all electric cars in the country to track vehicle position 24/7 and share that info with the Chinese government.

The US government is interested and able, but China's government is in a whole different league...

The Chinese are very much in need of all types of data on its citizen drones.

The Chinese government has a new Social Credit system which pretty much requires watching everything everyone does.  You do as the every glorious leadership sees appropriate, you gain score, if you are a bad drone, your score goes down.  A bad score can result in limited travel, limited internet, what schools your kids go to....

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4

It's pretty much right out of a dystopian Sci-Fi movie.