Big Data: The Big Opportunity

A new IPA report has been produced to help the audience measurement community use ‘big data’ more effectively.

The report also investigates the implications of big data use for agencies, advertisers, media owners and industry media currencies – and draws up a list of ten key questions that shold always be asked (see below).

‘The Big Opportunity‘ report, written by Newsline columnist and director of Research the Media, Richard Marks, makes clear that in the context of media research and audience measurement, big data constitutes a ‘revolution’ in terms of the accountability and the skill-sets demanded of the people producing it.

Some supporters of big data argue that the ‘what’ is all that is needed and that statistically analysing the ‘what’ will indicate the ‘why’ – motivations – through correlations and pattern recognition. However, this approach can run the risk of seeing correlations or patterns that aren’t there, argues the IPA report.

With this criticism in mind, The Big Opportunity is built upon a number of key questions considered vital to overcoming the concerns voiced.

According to the report, the industry should be focusing on aspects including which areas of consumer behaviour and competitor performance are covered and which are not, which universe the data represents, how much work will be needed to turn data into insight, how frequently data is made available and whether there are gaps in audience measurement.

Already, big data provides “highly granular, passive measurement of behaviour at a low cost and speed” and allows for a “far more detailed measurement of long tail digital consumption,” says the report. Yet makes it clear that the market research industry is going to have change.

“Greater in-house research and analytical skills will be needed to guide the selection and interpretation of the data sets available…[and budgets must be] allocated to the most relevant and reliable datasets.”

Meanwhile the balance of research agency expertise will adjust to incorporate a higher degree of “data curation” as opposed to just “data creation”.

In order to maximise the opportunities presented by both big data and industry audience services, the skilled data purchaser and user – the ‘data shopper’ – needs to be asking the right questions.