What is big data?

The term "big data" is used in almost every marketing conversation today...but what is it, really?

Big data describes massive sets of high-volume, high-velocity information created by online transactions and interactions. These data sets can be either human-generated or machine-generated. These sets of data can provide companies with high levels of insight into their consumer groups and can improve performance, but determining relevancy and forming an effective strategy can be difficult due to the sheer amount of information available.

                                  

                      

(South Park)

 

Human-generated data comes from user actions online. It's created both intentionally, and as a transactional by-product in the form of metadata. Intentional data is found in the form of purchases, sales, user-generated content on social media, like Instagram or Facebook, blog posts, audio or video. Metadata accompanies all of the above content and can be larger than the transactions or actions themselves. Metadata is machine-readable and provides contextual information about the intentionally shared data. It's machine-generated and readable but falls under the "human-generated" category because it's directly related to human-generated information.

Machine-generated data is created by machines in relation to other machines. Machine to machine transactions can be found among IoT devices in the same network, between mobile devices and their network providers and electronic utility meters and utility providers. M2M data is automated and facilitated by AI and machine-learning algorithms, which automatically sort, analyse and interpret data received without any human assistance. 

Big data's key factors are its velocity, variety and volume. It requires machine assistance to be understood and is becoming increasingly important in the world of business. Big data grows exponentially with each online interaction, but interpreting this information remains a major challenge to businesses today. Efficiently sorting and analysing relevant information can make or break digital marketing efforts - companies must take every possible step to employ the correct data analysis tools to optimise their performance online.