Big data and digital marketing were made for each other, but how can those working in the latter make sense of such volumes of data and actually monetise it now and in the future?
While the latest analysis of digital marketing trends for 2016 shows a surge in interest towards content marketing, one major and crucial problem to overcome is making sense of the world of big data.
Like never before, data scientists – whose job is to sift through reams of recorded data to establish obvious trends – are being recruited to help digital marketing firms make sense of what the internet is trying to tell it.
Just taking some recent statistics, it’s estimated that close to 1.7m bytes of information are generated every second per human on the planet.
Not only that, but 2.5 quintillion bytes are produced by all of us every single day, and this is only going to increase as the years progress.
A ‘data science tsunami’
Such startling statistics saw Siliconrepublic.com’s editor, John Kennedy, last year describe how Ireland is on the brink of a ‘data science tsunami’ not just in digital marketing, but in many fields within science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
With digital marketing being an industry that is still in its infancy, social networks like Facebook are leading the way in better understanding how its own business, and all the other businesses it deals with, turn raw data into monetised results.
To help us get an idea of how far we have come and what to expect, Roisin Scanlan of Next Generation Recruitment has created an infographic highlighting how the combination of digital marketing and data science will lead to an ‘explosive collision’ and for the right reasons.
This infographic originally appeared on Next Generation’s blog
Digital marketing image via Shutterstock
Update: 20/07/2015
This article has been amended to reflect that 1.7m bytes of information are generated every second and 2.5 quintillion bytes produced by all of us every single day, rather than 7m bytes and 5 quintillion bytes, respectively.
