The embarrassing Myspace profile you thought was dead is actually alive and well in the digital advertising space.

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered to Congress for selling user data to Cambridge Analytica. All the hype and worry on Capitol Hill centered around how Facebook handles users' data and privacy. However, a report from Vice says Facebook is not the first tech giant to sell users' information.

In 2011, Myspace sold user profiles to the advertising company Viant, who then was bought by Time, Inc. in 2016.

Myspace died years ago. But 1 billion dead profiles are still valuable; they were bought by ad-tech firm Viant, which became part of Time Inc. in 2016.

So the behaviourally targeted ads of today may contain hints of our long-lost teenage digital selves.

Wistful or creeped out?

— Reuben Binns (@RDBinns) April 3, 2018

While dead to us, our digital teenage selves can be very valuable to advertisers. Toby Benjamin, vice president of Viant said in a recent interview, “With the Myspace database, a lot had changed in people’s lives since they registered, so to maintain the quality of names, email address, etc, we have consumer interactions across the Time Inc universe."

Benjamin says Time filled in the blanks left by time through going through lists of "magazine subscriptions or emails when people sign up for newsletters." When the company came across someone who hadn't signed up for a Time newsletter or a magazine subscription, it simply bought the missing data from another company.

"We partner with Experian and a couple of other big data companies for a one-to-one ID level match," Benjamin said.

Tim Vanderhook, chief executive of Viant, said that in 2015, Myspace has access to more than a billion registered users globally, and over 465 million U.S. email addresses.

“I think one of the reasons this sits so weirdly with people is that the realm of online behavioral advertising has changed so much since we were teenagers,” Oxford associate professor Max Van Kleek said. “The fact that data from that era could be used in the modern machinery we have today is, I think, what’s causing this perception of dissonance."

Despite that dissonance, Van Kleek says that old data can tell advertisers a lot about you; for instance, if you told Myspace you like Tupac, you might find yourself seeing ads for Unsolved.

And if that sounds creepy, Vanderhook believes the Myspace data has the potential to be taken even further, saying that those old profiles could soon "serve as the centerpiece of a major new cross-channel marketing initiative.”

#facebook #myspace

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