First party data is a new name for an old thing

In the 1920s, you could buy a house through the Sears.Roebuck catalogue. You could also buy pretty much anything you wanted. Sears knew what dress you bought last year and what you might like this year.

The only difference today is scale. We can scale on unimaginable levels, and it comes with its own challenges. Where to store the data, what to do with it and how to use it without being creepy. Not much is new, things just appear to be so.