The growing number of consumer data sources—with the complexity of integrations across multiple consumer touch points—poses a challenge for end users to assess data quality. Gaining a better understanding of the underlying quality of data, to inform how best to deploy for advertising and marketing decisions, is the principal issue.
The primary purpose of this study (conducted on behalf of the Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement [CIMM]) was to help inform the general media community about the quality, recency, consistency, and representative aspects of third-party data. The secondary purpose was to provide feedback on the industry's appetite for master data and reporting standardization.
To improve data quality, the marketing and advertising industry could establish a “Principles of Data Quality” disclosure; create a roster of items to ask of data suppliers; request transparency—data firm disclosures—including consumer authentication procedures, multiple data source descriptions, model target techniques and testing results, recency of data, integration techniques, data labeling, and top-line descriptions for all of the above; create best practice standards.
