"Big Data" is Not Your Ordinary Display Buzz Word
Big data is everywhere. It’s in your car’s navigational system, your television — and, yes, even your marketing and advertising campaign. While it might sound like a 21st-century buzzword, it’s actually far more important. It’s a real and powerful force in the marketing industry that should drive decisions if you want to create a successful campaign.
Accessing Data Effectively
Figuring out how to access and analyze big data is the first step to harnessing it for better advertising performance. Since big data automatically inspires anxiety in many business owners, it’s helpful to break it down and to understand how you can leverage it to benefit your firm.
If you’re already working with a data management platform (DMP), you can layer your first-party data into the system so you have more relevant potential for analysis. This gives you greater control over your offline data and allows you to view it more comprehensively.
You can also use an offline onboarding process if you don’t have a DMP (or if you plan to work with one in the future), or you can leverage pixel data to mine information from your online visitors. Pixels planted on your website will collect data behind the scenes and export it.
First and Second Party Data Are Extremely Valuable
Historically, first-party data has been the star of the show. It’s highly customized to your specific business and audience, which means that each piece of data (and every analysis you run) is specifically geared toward your needs. As 2016 unfolds, advertisers will ramp up their use of first-party data, but they’ll also take advantage of second party data.
Second-party data will also begin to climb in popularity. It requires less work on the part of the advertiser because they purchase the data from another party, but it’s still highly relevant to their audience and business. Meanwhile, third party data might decrease in relevance and popularity because of its lack of specificity.
The benefits of second party data are numerous. For one, advertisers can use it to enhance the customer experience and to better analyze consumption patterns. Additionally, they can grow their clients’ customer bases faster and more accurately and supercharge their data mining capabilities.
New Opportunities Will Continue to Spawn From Big Data
Beacon technology has made consistent headlines of late. It’s a technology that allows shoppers to use their mobile devices to find offers and promotions on in-store purchases. Think of it as the perfect marriage between online and offline shopping.
We’ll also see wearables come further into the picture. Wearable technology gives advertisers the opportunity to track first and second party data more closely, which means they have more information to analyze. Additionally, virtual reality and smart home technology will connect stores and consumers with the stores they frequent.
Then you have connected vehicles, which are poised to revolutionize the way people shop, travel, and interact with one another. The vehicles of the future will provide far more than reliable transportation, and advertisers can capitalize on these developments if they embrace big data.
To learn more about how you can take advantage of the advancements in advertising, read our POV: Search-to-Store Attrribution: Solving the Missing Link.
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