(On the) Look out! 3 Data Quality items in 2022

As we get into the last month of a very interesting year for research technology, our vantage point in the industry has given us a few insights into what the general trends of 2022 are going to be.

We'll focus on trends and aspects of Data Quality, which is the topic we're closest to:

1.?????More click farms

Unfortunately, this will be a thing. The cost to creating a new internet identity is zero. There is no marginal cost for fraud, and only "revenue" potential for fraudsters.

This is our industry’s single biggest problem.

It is likely not a secret anymore that much of the fraud in our industry is via click farms, not via bots, although the descriptions are often interchangeably used. I personally think it’s important to distinguish between the two.

2.?????Supply/Demand, Prices and Fraud

What compounds Point 1 is that supply has been harder to get, and the average prices have been going up. That means more efforts to add supply will come through, and with that even more fraud.

3.?????Email / Deterministic 'currency' is coming

Whether we 'blame' GDPR, or Google's continued project of winding down cookies, the need for first party data, opt-in to surveys via emails will be one of a few (if not "the") true forms of deterministically identifying individuals. Additionally, as companies service advertising research and research technology, emails will become the "true keys" for any transaction.

This allows a huge potential for the industry to grow our TAM, so this trend is a good thing.

However, this does mean that we will have to deal with new forms of manipulation of that digital currency.