The Viral Tech Report 2.0

What Big Data?

MT @digitas: Facebook: one pedabyte of data created online every two days – @jmandese Watch #mpomma live! bit.ly/SBJPrh

— Tom Cunniff (@tomcunniff) January 23, 2013

‘Big Data’ was the big topic at the OMMA DDM Conference in NYC.    The meeting room at the Grand Hyatt in NYC was freezing cold, but Big Data  is hot in advertising technology today. DDM means data driven marketing – the means by which ads are targeted to consumers. It drives all kinds of media – from personalized email offers, to purchase suggestions served up on Amazon, to banners and videos dynamically appearing as you browse. Thus the tourism ads you receive are creepily in synch with that gmail message you sent out to your friends about vacation ideas . . .

John Montgomery , COO, GroupM Interaction, North America, moderating at OMMA DDM.
Plus a VML live tweet!

Indeed, ‘creepy’ was the operative word at the conference. Both onstage and in tweets, the conversation was about A) staying within the bounds of privacy regulations, while B) enriching the advertiser’s relationship with the consumer. To achieve that, Big Data is well, bigger than your average sized datum. For example, the last click. Today, the effectiveness of online advertising is measured by the action of a purchase being made or personal info being entered. Tomorrow, however, the ‘user trajectory’ of all clicks will transform the commercial message, responding to your behavior. We – you – are  actively feeding Big Data bits of yourself constantly, click by click, swipe by swipe, and it’s hungry for more.

Big Data by luckey sun

Data data everywhere, but not a drop to drink

Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at VivaKi

With so much information to process, the hot jobs in marketing are for the ‘mathemagician,’ ‘the data scientist,’ ‘the marketing technologist,’ and ‘the infonaut.’ According to Randy Watson , VP of Consulting, Digital Impact & Innovation, Acxiom, the trick is to transform Big Data into ‘bidirectional applications of insights,’ ie adaptive campaigns targeted for measureable results. With accountability being the necessary byproduct, this is not the old fashioned kind of creativity – the big idea – Don Draper loves.

“Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

Julie Bernard , Group VP, Consumer Centricity, Direct Marketing & Loyalty, Macy’s Corp

Are we in the midst of a hype cycle? Is Big Data cheaper/faster/better than intuition? Our experts acknowledge that the leap from data to action is substantial, and ask if we are better off using plain old common sense,?  Even though dollars spent on display advertising are projected to double in the next 2 years, far more is still spent on bulk mail (the kind that won’t get delivered on Saturdays any more).

We Are Borg

Our destiny is to be identified across the devices we use every day (often more than one device at a time) and to be marketed to in an ‘omnichannel environment.’ This means that regular folks are already infonauts – everyone needs to navigate the ever-increasing amount of data hitting them whether ready or not.

Are you or are you not?

Dave Morgan (@davemorgannyc), CEO of Simulmedia answered the question, Is the consumer overloaded?

“No. We do not have enough data… Those who don’t know where they are going can’t benefit, but those who do know have the advantage, and do not suffer from overload.”

Hmmm.

Graphic by luckey sun used under Creative Commons License

Photo of John Montgomery by Jeffrey Marino