Whether or not you’re leading a team of data scientists or hands-on with the data directly, you need to understand how data works.
Elizabeth Lukas is the CEO of Decoded Americas, a leading technology educator specializing in transformative digital learning. Decoded teaches organizations and business leaders how to collaborate with technology and become more data-driven. As CEO, she is responsible for the overall growth, communication, and operation of the business.
In this episode of Velocitize Talks, Lukas shares her thoughts on Decoded, cybersecurity, consumer privacy and data personalization.
Cyber insecurity (2:19)
There is such a small population of people that understand data and cybersecurity, and given all the things that people have to worry about today, it’s the last thing on their list.
An annual research study published by the global data science community, Kaggle, shows that millennials dominate data science, with 25- to 29-year-olds being the most common age bracket, representing over half of respondents. However, Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs globally by 2021.
Despite these numbers, according to (ISC)², an international, nonprofit membership association for information security leaders, organizations aren’t doing enough to properly equip and power their IT staff with the education and authority needed to bolster their implementation of security technologies.
Facebook’s data gold mine (2:57)
Facebook is a platform that collects a lot of data and information about the way we live, the way we talk to each other, our friends, and our networks. They’re sitting on probably the world’s largest collection of personally identifiable data and they’re monetizing that with advertisers.
Facebook generated close to $69.66 billion U.S. dollars in ad revenues in 2019, which accounted for 98.5% of its global revenue. This equates to an average $29.25 per user and a $4.29 per user increase year-over-year. Considering that Facebook reported a little more than 2.6 million worldwide users at the end of Q4 2019, user data generated more than $76 million for the company.
Saving private data (3:25)
[Privacy] is a fundamental business shift for Facebook if they’re going to take their messaging systems and provide end-to-end encryption.
End-to-end encryption is a way of providing enhanced security between communicators so that third parties cannot eavesdrop on the discussion, making it difficult to intercept communications. However, Facebook says the shift to end-to-end encryption could take years. “There are no imminent changes coming here,” noted Jon Millican, Facebook’s software engineer for Messenger privacy. “This is going to be a long process. We’re dedicated to getting this right rather than doing it quickly.”
Up close and personalized (4:21)
Personalization is the big buzzword now in the industry and I don’t know if we’ve achieved that Holy Grail quite yet.
Marketers are using more data than ever before to personalize their marketing outreach to create richer experiences for the consumer through data personalization. Today’s savvy users are expecting more personalized experiences and they are rewarding companies with customer loyalty.
According to a BI Intelligence survey, 44% of respondents said they would likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience and 49% said they’ve purchased a product they weren’t planning on buying after receiving a personalized recommendation.
In Amazon we trust? (10:12)
Consumers have to take a step back. On one side, you want to know that you have free will and the ability to make decisions about the things that you want to see. On the other side, there are so many choices available that you want something to just help you decide.
When it comes to data privacy and data personalization, consumers are at a crossroads, which often sends mixed signals to retailers. A recent SmarterHQ study showed that 79% of consumers believe companies know too much about them, yet 90% are willing to share behavioral data for a cheaper and easier brand experience.
When it comes to trust, consumers overwhelmingly turn to Amazon, which accounts for almost half of all online sales in the U.S. SmarterHQ found that 47% of consumers say they’ll look on Amazon if another brand doesn’t make relevant product suggestions, and an estimated 35% of purchases on Amazon come from product recommendations alone.
To learn more about Decoded, visit their website and follow them on LinkedIn.
This interview was originally recorded at SXSW 2019 and has been updated accordingly.