Marketing Analytics | How much power it has?
“Data is becoming a new natural resource. It promises to be for the 21st century what steam power was for the 18th, electricity for the 19th and hydrocarbons for the 20th”, stated IBM CEO Ginni Rometty in the company's 2013 annual report. As India gets more and more exposure to data, amidst the Jio fiasco and the consolidation of our telecommunication industry; we Indians can't help wonder what kind of a visionary statement that might have been. But the real question is: What does that make people in control of data? Are they theoretically omniscient? Also, does that make people on this planet who don't have access to data, any bit safer? We will get to these questions eventually.
We see Internet giants such as the likes of Facebook, Google, and Twitter frequently under legal argument with the government, for their dealing in trillions of personal information. But just think about it, why shouldn't someone be insecure? Previously, if someone had something to say, he/she had to do a multitude of things to gain an audience. Communities, trends (macroscopic as well as mini), friends, dates, food, commute, music, important documentation - now all in a click of a button. Advertisers controlling their campaigns with sophisticated metrics, showing ads to people based on their interests. Just compare this with billboard ROI, and it really seems daunting. CTR, Impressions, Views, Leads - every aspect of your media asset measurable real-time. Of course, social media is here to stay. And analytics is going to only evolve in the future. But it's not that bad after all. Data is collected in macro samples/cohorts/groups rather than on an individual scale, and the study of that kind of data can only benefit market research. It's kept for a certain period of time for analysis and deep understanding, in some cases for feeding to AI; and then deleted. My website contains user data for one year before it's deleted, as stated in our privacy policy.
And what makes Analytics important, that it's truly crucial to filter through data and bringing insights. Whether it be from social media, search, local database or anything else, Analytics maps the data on a template, from which people in black suits can interpret it and form necessary solutions. And those black suits come from all walks of life, corporate as well as the government. Donald Trump was just one of many who used data analytics for his election campaign. In fact, others don't come to global attention, simply because they are/were not competing for POTUS. Not only politics, but we also have data representing the economy, geopolitical architecture, the flow of trade, and almost everything responsible for moving this planet. Which cues us to our previous question: does that make people on this planet who don't have access to data, any bit safer? Does that non-exposure save their information being misused by some multinational conglomerate? Ask North Korea! If you haven't realized it, that was the funny anecdote of this entire piece.
If you find the time, just go through Google's Data Visualization program, where they work with some of the best designers across the planet to tell stories through data. From a category study of 10 years of search data on different fruits around the world to how thew Brazillian election campaign came around, they all reveal the various possibilities of Data & Analytics through beautiful stories. The entire exercise only got sharper with Big Data, Machine Learning, and AI joining the room. We can now address large chunks of data, faster and more efficiently. We can now replicate data from an important source on a virtual plane and interact with it. Companies will use the saved time and money to reallocate/upskill/disengage their data resources and consolidate their workforce. Investment in only high-quality assets is something every enterprise dreams of. And analytics is at its best to provide enterprises with the solutions they desire and empower the CXOs much further in their leadership.
