How many of us have gotten personalised ads either on Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, or simply while surfing the web? Ever wondered why? This is simply an outcome of the data collected by the web. It is really important to understand both sides of this data collection, which we will get to next.
Publisher
User data is essential for the publisher, as it gives insight on how well the content is doing—is it getting the desired response from the audience? These insights can assist in making content-related decisions, such as what changes to make, when to make them, and why to make them. Hence, in the end, all that matters for the publisher is their audience, and without data collection, it would be unimaginable to optimise the audience interaction and keep track of certain things before it’s too late.
User
Users can argue whether data collection is right or wrong; there is no one side to pick for them as it boils down to user preferences. One important thing to note as a user is that data collection on most of the web applications is an opt-in feature, i.e., in order to get access to the content, we compromise our data. As a result, it is entirely up to us to determine which side is more important. In my opinion, I believe that even for the audience, data collection is beneficial. For instance, have you ever gotten an advertisement for an item that you were looking for and gotten a better deal through the ad? Instead of looking at random ads, wouldn’t it be great to look at ads that you like?
ConclusionÂ
Overall, data collection is important for our economy. Most of the tech giants make their money through marketing and advertising campaigns. As a result, as a publisher, I would prefer to collect user information in order to better serve my audience; however, as a user, you must weigh your options and decide how you want to interact with the web in general. So, as the week passes, I will likely share my Google Analytics data to give more insights and to inform significant decisions I will be making regarding my content.
