Predictive Analytics- Charlie Betts

The most useful data I provide for businesses would have to come from my search history on Google. I google a lot of stuff during the day. Whenever I have a question about something, I google it. Whenever I hear lyrics from a song but can’t remember the name of the song, I google the lyrics. Whenever my indecisive friends and I can’t decide on a place to eat, I google restaurants. I use google almost too much throughout the day, but I have no shame. One type of business that would definitely target me would be restaurants, as I use Google to try to find new restaurants to eat at. I also search for sports related news/information, so ESPN or any kind of sports related corporation would target me as well. I also use Google to look up movies or shows that I am watching to get more information about them, so movie theaters or online streaming sites like Netflix might try to target me. In terms of politics, I do not think that any specific candidate or party would try to target me based off of my search history. I am fairly conservative, but that is not displayed based off of my search history. I usually like to google a certain political topic and see what each candidate is saying about it, as I like to make sure I am getting “both sides of the story” (so to speak) so I can form a well informed opinion on the matter. I am not necessarily sure how politicians could target me, as I do not search for a lot of politically related things on Google due to my lack of interest in politics. If they could find a way to advertise or influence me using the things I search for on Google, that would be impressive. I would love to see an advertisement on my computer screen saying something like “Donald Trump Hates N.C. State Athletics” or something ridiculous like that. That’s the only way, in my mind, that they could target/influence me based off of my search history.

I don’t really mind being targeted online. I have gotten so used to it that I now just don’t even realize it is there half the time. I do not plan on changing my online habits due to predictive analytics. I, for one, think predictive analytics is pretty cool, as long as it doesn’t get too invasive. I have noticed ads and trends online that are similar to my interests, but I generally just ignore them.

I was unable to complete the last activity because I do not have Google Chrome and it would not work on my stone-aged Internet Explorer. I didn’t have time to download Chrome, so I’ll have to do this activity at another time. Sorry!