Believe it or not, your data is out there in the market, and
it is being sold to other companies. Have you ever wondered how accurate an
advertisement in your mail or on your social media is? It is as if your phone
is hearing you somehow and showing you the ads according to it. The accuracy of
these advertisements is spot on, and it is all thanks to your data that helps
the marketers advertise a product according to your needs.
Data brokering is a multi-billion-dollar industry that does
the business of acquiring and selling consumer data. Once consumer data is
uploaded on the internet, it is available to the data broker companies who sell
it to other companies. The industry comprises many companies that collect and
sell consumer data to other companies. It is usually done for marketing
purposes.
With all that said, it is a question of concern about how
much data there is out there in the market, what they know about you and how
much your data is worth. These are all genuine concerns any person would have. Data
brokers usually collect data from public records, online activity, and purchase
history. Once acquired, this data is really valuable for marketing companies,
and the brokers sell it to them so that they can perform targeted marketing and
gain success in their ads.
Acxiom is one of the largest data brokering companies with
23000 servers working collecting consumer data. This single company holds data
of around 500 million people worldwide. Moreover, there are around 4000 data brokering
companies active worldwide.
Take a look at the following infographic for more information
about how data brokering works and how valuable your data is.
Infographic by: webfx
