Breezy Briefings is pleased to present a brand new essay series by Abraham George titled Why Data Is The New Oil? Subscribe using the button above or Telegram to receive the latest updates as soon as it is published. This is Part 2 - if you missed the previous part, check out Part 1.
It was the late oil minister of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani who famously said more than 40 years ago, “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stones, and the oil age too will end long before the world runs out of oil.”
Conversely, it is not that we just discovered data now. Data has always been there. It is only recently, with the latest advancements in technology and programming skills, that we were able to make the best use of the data. The companies that can intelligently decipher these data and manipulate/exploit it to their advantage will become the equivalents of the Standard Oil and Exxon Mobil of the oil & railroad era in the US.
For targeted advertising, digital marketers have relied very much on ‘cookies’. Cookies are files that are automatically downloaded to a computer when a user visits a website usually without the knowledge of the user. This is the reason why ads start popping up on our Facebook, Instagram, or browser when we search online for a shoe or any product. These files track and report certain usage patterns back to the company that planted the cookie. But very soon this is all going to change and disrupt the almost $400 bln online ad market.
It is important to understand that all cookies are not bad. First-party cookies are used by websites to remember the items in our cart, the number of items we bought, the language to display, etc. These are helpful to prevent us from mistakes and avoid repetitive work. In many cases, the website will not work properly without the cookies.
Where it gets really creepy and spooky is when a website allows these tracking files to our devices, so that our data can be collected. Third-party cookies can track our activities on the site where the cookie was delivered and even on every other website we will visit. Some websites do a carpet bombing on our computers with tracking cookies. As the saying goes, “if something is free, it is most likely you (and by extension, your data) are the product”.
Once again, cookies are very instrumental in showing you something similar to the product that you searched for online. Your search was passed on to data aggregators through their cookies.
Most of these aggregators are companies that you have never heard of. Their main job is to collect and monetize our data. It is for a reason that they remain private too. They play a low-key but critical ‘plumbing-like’ role in the success of companies like Google and Facebook. But this ‘cookie business’ is going to take a different turn and that’s what I will discuss in my next post.
So, there we go. Thanks for reading Breezy Briefings. If you enjoyed this, I'd really appreciate it if you could take a second and tell a friend. Honestly. It makes such a big difference.
Forward this email. Recommend the newsletter. Share on Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, LinkedIn, Slack, wherever!
Join Breezy Briefings’ Official Telegram Channel: https://t.me/BreezyBriefings
Abraham George is a seasoned investment manager with more than 40 years of experience in trading & investment and multi-billion dollar portfolio management spanning diverse environments like banks (HSBC, ADCB), sovereign wealth fund (ADIA), a royal family office and a hedge fund. Currently, he is setting up a hedge fund where foreign citizens can invest in Indian growth stocks like Tanla operating in hyper-growth markets like CPaaS.