Season 1, Episode 3: Why Our Data is Wrong by 30%?

In our previous episode, we announced that a quarter of users, representing a third of data, are missing from analytics. In some companies, it can be twice as much. Why?

Despite the digital economy being data-centric, how is such a gap in data collection possible? The investigation run by the Edgee team shows that when data is collected on the client-side (browser and mobile applications), the harvest faces three significant hurdles to overcome.

1. Laws and Regulations

From Saudi Arabia to California, each country has specific regulations about consumer privacy. These laws are crucial and guarantee that consumers can decide what to share and what not to share. In most states, users need to give their consent to share their usage data. If the percentage of consent given is highly volatile based on the brand, and more importantly, based on the type of consumer, you can consider that only half of the users give their consent. Of course, the more the user is a core one, the less likely they will give their consent.

2. Ad Blockers

Ad blockers, in addition to blocking ads, prevent usage data from being uploaded. It truncates the data even more, as the user ID is shared, but the associated usage is not. An estimated 50% of users have an ad blocker on the web. Here too, the more the user is a core one, the more likely they will have an ad blocker.

3. Web Performance

It is the sum of minor performance issues or bugs that occur on the client-side. It can be an SDK or JavaScript bug, a lost connection, etc., but in the end, it represents 15 to 20% of data losses.

Collectively, these three hurdles - laws and regulations, ad blockers, and web performance issues - result in digital companies missing between 30% to 60% of their usage data

So, what can be done to ensure 100% of the data is collected? As with financial transactions, the most efficient and secure way to accurately harvest the data is to do it on the server-side.

See episode 4 next week.

Only for the tech girls and boys 🤠, here's a snapshot of our achievements thus far.

• Data loss estimation: Wondering about the impact of data loss on your analytics? With our upcoming Data Loss Estimation tool, you'll soon have the power to accurately assess and understand the data gaps in your analytics integrations.

• Our first components: Have you ever hesitated to install a client-side SDK due to concerns about stability, performance impact, or data privacy? Edgee is here to change the game! Our first available components will be Google Analytics, Amplitude and Segment. Of course, others will be arriving very soon.