Data has become the most valuable asset on Earth, surpassing oil, in 2018. With companies using small, big data and cookies for marketing purposes and to target specific audiences with extreme precision, let’s dive into what has data become in the past 2 years.
What Is Data?
“To really understand big data, it’s helpful to have some historical background. Here is Gartner’s definition, circa 2001 (which is still the go-to definition): Big data is data that contains greater variety arriving in increasing volumes and with ever-higher velocity. This is known as the three Vs.
Put simply, big data is larger, more complex data sets, especially from new data sources. These data sets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software just can’t manage them. But these massive volumes of data can be used to address business problems you wouldn’t have been able to tackle before.”
This could be simplified, as some app developers said, as “data is every single event an application gathers from users who land on it”.
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal
Cambridge Analytica had purchased Facebook data on tens of millions of Americans without their knowledge to build a “psychological warfare tool,” which it unleashed on US voters to help elect Donald Trump as president. Just before the news broke, Facebook banned Wylie, Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL, and Aleksandr Kogan, the researcher who collected the data, from the platform. This has become the biggest and most recent technological and political scandal which has also costed Facebook a total of 2 billion dollars in fines.
The Evolution Of Data
A bright example would be OpenAI recent report which said “From the platform, an editor might be able to see that 30% of the people who read the breaking news section on their site on a daily basis also “like” both President Obama and Jack Daniels on Facebook. From here, editors can easily create an email campaign targeting these users. On the marketing side, employees can promote content targeting potential loyal readers that match that audience. And for the ad sales team, they can boost their CPC rates for brands looking to gain traction with Obama and Jack Daniels fans, or can easily print out an RFP response to hand over to Jack Daniels — showing them why sponsoring content on the site will be beneficial for them, the publisher and the reader.” This is a clear confirmation of the fact that big data will evolve into a much complete and complex way to analyse users behaviour.
