Big Data – Creating a Big Impact on AdTech

One of the industries to have profited the most from the advent of big data has been advertising. The flow of communication between advertisers and consumers has been drastically altered and improved with the use of big data.  Today, big data and analytics is helping marketers and advertisers understand their customers and engage with them better.

If we go back only a few years, advertising meant placing advertisements on newspapers, TV, radio, and billboards. The advertisement companies had little more than educated guesses to determine which channel was helping convert more buyers after seeing the advertisement.

The coming of digitalization and data-driven advertising and marketing has wrought a revolution in the media industry. Analytics has allowed marketers to convert more consumers through more personalized messaging and better-targeted advertising.The digital world has a proliferation of mobile, video, and internet advertising options.

Analytics allows advertisers to get more visibility into the online habits of their consumers. Every click on social media or in a browser creates a digital footprint of the user. Big Data helps businesses understand more about the customer’s interests and behavior. They can generate insights about what products, messaging, promotions, and communication strategies are likely to click with the consumers and which may fall short.

So, let us look at how customer data is being used in the world of advertising technology.

Today, consumers generate millions of data points every day through visits to social media sites,and through their likes, comments, search history, etc. This data is the raw material for insights on their interests, current needs or responses to certain previously purchased products.

Enterprises use such data for customer acquisition and retention strategies. They drive targeted delivery of messages and promotional content for their products and services. Also, email solutions are kicked into action to send out personalized recommendations and notifications. Companies also resort to retargeting depending on the past browsing and interaction history of customers.

Let us now look at how big data is shaping the advertising industry and ad operations by solving some key challenges.

1. Predicting audience behavior: Publishers and media are using data at a large scale to deliver the right content to the right people on the right platform at the right time. The digital footprint of users is mined to understand what content, movies, and music consumers want. Data obtained on user behavior from social media analytics often reveals overlooked factors that have the potential to drive customer interest.

2. Improved targeted advertisement: As big data helps make digital media consumption more efficient, consumer behavior combined with demographic information can be used for driving more personalized advertising.

3.Optimized customer acquisition and retention strategies: Today, people pick products, movies, shows, or content based on reviews on social media and review sites. With big data,marketers can tap this consumer data to design tailored strategies to attract and retain customers. By leveraging various data sets, marketers and advertisers can plug into the likes and dislikes of consumers based on a more complete understanding of their decision-making process.This will help them develop and tailor attractive promotional strategies, define pre-emptive objection-handling, and loyalty strategies to retain and expand their customer base.

4. New product development and content monitoring: Consumer behavior, social listening, reviews, and comments are all feedback for advertisers to develop new content and communications. Innovative content like short videos, songs, and testimonials from real customers can be created and distributed for greater personal impact.This is opening up interesting new avenues for advertisers. For eg., insights about consumer behavior during specific weather events are allowing them to drive out product communications better targeted for the time.

5.Media scheduling:Digital media and social networks have closed the gap between distributors and consumers.Distributors don’t need an intermediate medium to reach their potential customers. For example, before a product launch,teasers and “buzzy”content can be pushed out on social media channels.A careful analysis of the reaction to these teasers can form the basis for more personalized advertisements, product content, and promotional offers right to the consumer’s device.

6.Campaign planning: Analytics is helping companies improve the effectiveness of multi-channel marketing initiatives as well. For eg., online response to advertisements is being used to identify the suitable location for offline brand campaigns where the footfall could be high and the brand impact the greatest. Marketers are also looking to increase the visibility of such offline campaigns through online messaging.

Of course, many brands and companies are leveraging Big Data for improving advertisement effectiveness. For instance, Netflix is believed to study insights about the type of series likely to trend, the specific actors likely to draw more viewership, etc. Netflix looks to understand the specific attributes or qualities likely to make particular shows popular. They do this by conducting a strategic, in-depth, and fine analysis of viewers’ habits over many millions of viewings of shows. They then use those insights to deliver the right communication to viewers to drive up product usage and engagement. There is little doubt about the value of big data and analytics in improving marketing and advertising effectiveness. Advertisers are specifically using the technology to create better messages, target them more specifically, and deliver them more optimally. The desired impact is nothing less than greater visibility and increased conversions.