Michael Bertini is iQuanti’s director of search strategy. Here, he shares his thoughts on the Senate hearing that followed the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
How will the Facebook data privacy scandal make targeting harder for marketers?
Facebook might apply some limits to ad targeting on its platform. If that happens, marketers could lose access to people’s interests, likes, and location data.
What role can digital agencies play in helping brands with targeting?
Agencies can help formulate “workarounds” like spending more dollars in display and remarketing. LinkedIn is also an untapped market. I believe that Facebook is and has been on the decline, due to its political biases as well as its poor algorithm changes. I would rather put my money into YouTube, LinkedIn, or even Instagram.
As time goes on, will advertisers shift away from Twitter and Facebook towards Google?
I believe so… spending on Facebook is down year-over-year and will continue to drop if the company doesn’t make some dramatic changes to its algorithm. Twitter is doing well. But I think Google display, Google Shopping, YouTube, and LinkedIn are where marketers should start shifting spend.
Do we expect any regulation on these sites to come about as a result of the scandal?
The FTC already has some guidelines in place, but I think this is a much different kind of breach. I don’t think that any extreme regulations will come to pass, but the Senate might require social sites to be more open and transparent about the data they are sharing.
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