David Boyle argues that messy everyday data and data science beat expensive traditional metrics like Nielsen ratings for understanding TV and politics. He contrasts cheap daily analytics with slow, costly surveys, and shares how better data shaped his move from philanthropy to political work.
Chapters
It has a more serious title, but a lighter tone. I think the title suggests, aggregation of messy data can change the world. And so can all of we. And that is the lesson of this talk. I have to say I'm not allowed to talk about politics. So if anyone tweets this, I will get fired. Literally. Literally. So please, this is in a personal capacity. Don't mention it. You can mention the TV stuff, right? TV parallel of this, right? I alluded to it today is we used to ask the question for years and years, billions of dollars, how is my TV show performing on tv? Lovely Nielsen ratings, very expensive. Answer that question brilliantly. Not the most interesting question. How is my TV show performing? Whether it's on TV or Netflix or on social or in the whole world. The bigger picture question doesn't require billions of dollars of Netflix data over Nielsen data turns out to be a lot more impactful. Listening to everyday behavior, not the metrics that we grew up on, not the metrics that we're into as an industry, not the billion dollar industry, turns out to be much more important. I talked about that earlier, but people are really afraid of it. When you combine this data with data science, you can unlock all sorts of interesting potentials. I'm going to come on to changing the world in a minute, I promise. So free everyday data listening beats the billion dollar data. You're winning too. The example I gave earlier was para analytics. They've solved this for the TV space. They swirl together all this data and tell you how much demand there was for your TV show in a country on the day. It's the biggest revolution in TV data. I think lots of people don't like this data for lots of reasons. Oh, I can't match these data sources together. It's not high quality. I can't compare this to that. It's not representative. They're biased. Lots of people, for good reason, don't like this data. But it has huge advantages over Nielsen data. It's daily, even when the show's not on air. All countries are comparable and all TV shows, including your competitive ones, it's better than your data. It's good price data. So we all have the power to change the world and this is where we learned the lesson. I learned this lesson many years ago. I thought I was changing the world. I worked in philanthropy, analytical philanthropy, of course, because I'm a giant nerd and I read this quote, I was really happy. I spent $450 million a year on my foundation. I was philanthropy. This is awesome. Turned out not to be the whole of the quote. The rest of the quote then caused me to quit my job, move to America and get involved in politics. And I thought you would say, but I think if I could change the government, if I could repudiate Bush's policy, that would be the biggest good I could do. Okay, so philanthropy is not the answer. Actually helping win elections is a big. Does anybody not think that helping to change the election result could literally change the world? This guy can go in silence for 14 seconds. What they rely on is what TV data relies on, which is match data that high quality. We guarantee these surveys are absolutely representative. I can interpret it. I know exactly what the question is. I've tested it over years. But they have huge constraints the same way TV data does. Political data is at best only weekly because it's pretty expensive. You only do your polls in certain states that you think are the important ones for the election. And you only pay for polls for your candidate. It's really broad. The other data sets that are now available are daily. They compare every single state on a like to like basis of all different candidates. Set out of your comfort zone for the data you think is the answer. And let other people inspire you and challenge you in alternative ways of thinking, which is exactly what I talked about at BBC Worldwide Labs. Come in to BBC and tell us how we should do things differently. Oh my God. You want us to give up our currency of our industry and think differently. Thank you, that's perfect. Get uncomfortable, be challenged. Hey, people in politics, welcome change from outside and new ways of thinking, new methods, new types of data that you have dismissed are the answer. So TV switching from Nielsen to this messy, horrible stuff is absolutely going to be the future of for big TV brands. The industry doesn't realize it yet, so let's look back in five years time and see whether I was right. But in summary, I think we absolutely all have the power to change the world. George Soros quote, caused me literally to quit my job, move to America and live off my credit card for six months. Helping win elections. We all, everyone in this room has the power to influence that. And come back to the very sexy title, Aggregation of messy data is really cool. That can change the world as well.
