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Comment by Cd00d | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if anyone has insight into the value of this kind of data.

I work with alternative data for investors, mostly consumer spend behavior - things like point of sale transactions and online cart contents. These have value in that you can correlate panel behaviors with a company's revenue or identify trends in the market.

But, for data like ovulation schedules or events like pregnancy, it seems that it's a lot of work (and based on the FTC ethically questionable) to see one-off events or target specific consumers a small set of products.

I must be looking at the available opportunities with some kind of blind spot, because I don't get why companies would pay for this sort of data.

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Are you kidding? As far as I know, there is no greater event generally in a persons life when their purchasing habits and lifestyle change, and they are looking for new brands, than pregnancy.

Not only just for the huge amount of money people will spend on baby stuff, sorting out cribs, but then eighteen years perfectly time-able marketing for birthdays, different stages of development, loans, different cars, houses, college loans, It is probably the most valuable single even about someone from an advertising perspective and whoever can get in first is out to make bank.

How valuable do you think it to build relationship with, track the preferences of, and pick a the perfect adverts and products to show a person who has purchasing power for someone for eighteen solid years? With 100% certainty of what they are going to need unless something tragic happens.

Also knowing that based on the socioeconomic status whether they will be pressed for time and desperate for discounts, or be flush enough that they can afford to give their sprogg the most expensive things they will grow out of.

I was not kidding. I guess I didn't realize they were selling data with PII, which is shocking. I'm actually surprised Google and Facebook were taking in other-party data that wasn't aggregated, just due to the privacy and perception concerns.

That said, it still seems like a vector that's really problematic compared to gain. My personal anecdote is that my kids both only used Pampers Swaddlers diapers, simply because that's what the hospital gave us as we left - that is what I would see as a brilliant marketing partnership for P&G without risks of invasive perceptions.

There's a lot of value in knowing about a pregnancy -- in the months leading up to a baby, you're spending a ton of money getting ready for the baby or on constantly buying new clothes for mom as the pregnancy moves along. Once the baby comes, you have a good chance for capturing a repeat customer on a bunch of baby-related items (diapers, wipes, etc).

Also, if you’ve ever known someone who’s a new parent; the sheer volume of “welcome packages”, pamphlets, flyers, coupons, and free samples is staggering and clearly indicates (to me at least) that the customer value is uncommonly high.

If you sell cribs, you likely only have 1 - 2 chances per couple's entire lives to sell a crib. Saturation and timing of ads are paramount.

Oh god, that. When my wife gave birth, she received a "care package" that was just a box with few small items (water and some cosmetics testers, IIRC) and half a kilogram of flyers. I honestly was floored, and my deep hatred for the advertising industry had reached a new level. And then I noticed that the child health book they gave us - an official medical document that we'll be carrying for the next two decades - had multiple full-page ads in it. Because of course it did.

Did I said it already that advertising is a cancer on modern society?

You should read this article about Target going to great lengths to figure out which customers were pregnant. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....

Some companies' business is that one off customer. Think of weddings and graduations. Entire businesses are formed around those too.

The value is enormous because women's hormones depend basically on the menstrual cycle and the modifications of that with things like the pill.

People's behavior (women and men) depend a lot on hormones.

Big big data you can identify lots of useful patterns of behavior and you could control those.

At a minimum the last few on the mood list (depressed obsessive thoughts, apathetic, very self-critical) seem like great indicators of when someone might be the most receptive to advertising for SSRIs.

The fact that you can advertise these things at all is kind of shocking to me. I’d expect psychiatric drugs to be prescribed by a psychiatrist on their medicinal merits rather than purchased on an advertising-driven whim.

Wait til you learn how they advertise drugs to your psychiatrist!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/30/stripper-...

Oh, I mean there's all manner of conflict-of-interest, perverse-incentive type stuff going on there - you kind of expect that (sadly) in big business - but it's another whole level of dodginess marketing prescription pharmaceuticals directly to laypeople. It seems only one step above roaming the streets giving out "free samples" wrapped in twists of aluminium foil.

Facebook and Google do not pay for this data. Flo sends it to them for free, because it improves the performance/ROI of Flo's marketing.

Facebook and Google have no semantic understanding of this data, so it does not have inherent value to them in terms of creating configurable targeting segments. These are arbitrary data points sent by the app, and they might as well be labeled "A", "B", "C", and "D" rather than their sensitive names.

Flo can optimize their ads towards occurrences of event "A" or they can run ads towards "people who have triggered event B in the last week but not event C", but this doesn't offer specific value to other advertisers or FB/G themselves.

That said, when all of this is put into an ML black box, you never know how data points may be correlated. Maybe the system learns that people who trigger event "D" also end up buying baby clothes. That could lead to observable ad patterns, even if no one can explicitly tie event "D" to pregnancy.

> I don't get why companies would pay for this sort of data.

Knowing when someone is pregnant or trying to get pregnant seem like premium moments. Lots of money in fertility treatments and related services. Lots more money in maternity products and new baby products.

Yeah you can definitely sell anything to a couple who is trying to get pregnant, especially if you know they've been trying for a few months without success.

I'm sure you can successfully sell anything from coffee to yoga classes that helps with fertility. Just takes the right pitch and the right mark.

Having done a lot of research myself, there's a ton of folksy "tricks" online but precious little real research information available. A lot of the "tips" boil down to "be young and healthy" and "don't be old and unhealthy."

I've read some peer reviewed research as well but most of that is focused on outcomes and genetic testing of IVF embryos rather than natural fertilization. I get the impression that fertility isn't something that's well-studied outside of really generic health indicators like weight and age. And a lot of fertility information seems to focus on ages 20 to 35. They seem to assume that after that age you've given up on starting a family or that you already have one.

It is not because you are pregnant or because there is a baby on the way. It is because, during this time in a woman’s life she is very open for changes in her daily routines. Everything is interesting: from breakfast brands to shampoo brands, type and brand of car, even housing.

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