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If we were to define “Big Data” in the simplest definition, the term refers to voluminous amounts of organized and disorganized data that organizations can potentially mine or examine for business gains. Big data includes volume of data, velocity of data, variety of structured and unstructured data and most importantly data which has perceived value in context to business insights.
The ability to access, analyze and manage vast volumes of data while rapidly evolving the Information Architecture is crucial to Media & Entertainment Companies. Media companies procure reams of data every minute from every sector of their organization-advertising/sales, readership, user ship, content and accounting. The main sources of data collection are Social Media, Web Browsing Patterns, Traditional Enterprise Data from Operational Systems, Data from Data Aggregators, Advertising Response Data, Demographic Data & Historical M&E Data.
No one in the enterprise can ignore the 24/7/365 onslaught of news and social media. The amount of global media, including worldwide production of online and print news, articles, blogs and broadcast has exploded. Business data is doubling every 1.2 years. Social Media is the significant platform for big data. More than 1.4 billion online consumers are spending 22 percent of their time in social media. 172 million individuals visit Facebook each day, 30+ billion pieces of data added to Facebook each month, 40 million Twitter individuals each day, 22 million LinkedIn individual users each day, 20 million Google+ individual users each day, 17 million individual users each day and 2 million blog posts are written each day. Surprisingly, streaming videos take up more than 1/3 of the internet traffic during normal television watching hours. 72 hours of videos are added to YouTube every minute and this number is surely mind boggling. 1.3 exabyte’s of data sent and received by mobile internet users each month, more than 35million apps are downloaded each day and finally “more iPhone’s are sold than babies born each day.”
This revolution in technology will make media advertising enjoy a renaissance of sorts. Technology innovation will make it possible to trim a great deal of waste out of advertising by making it more precise. As advertising becomes more precise, it will become more efficient, which will drive up its ROI. This higher ROI will then lead to more investment in advertising. High advertisement budget will become smart business move. Accessing the right data-set and filtering out the noise contributes immensely to the success of the process.
Netflix’s creation of “House of Cards” is a well-documented example of Big data vis a vis Media & Entertainment Companies. Netflix concluded from the analysis of their customers their likes and dislikes, including ratings that indicated that many were fans of political dramas. Netflix also comprehended that they liked the actor Kevin Spacy and that they appreciated David Fincher’s work. Such well-researched data-set helped frame the highly successful creation of “House of Cards”. The impact on Netflix is that targeted programming is bringing them more subscribers and greater revenue, profitability, and market share.
Finally, not only Media & Entertainment companies, political data analytics has advanced from simple micro targeting to true predictive data science, and the track record is good. The Big data team of Donald Trump, President-elect, United States of America has a mammoth role to play. The polls, the pundits and the models predicted the win months back. Oczkowski, Director of product for the president-elect’s data team Cambridge Analytica, says, “Data’s alive and kicking. It’s just how you use it and how you buck normal political trends to understand your genre.”
The pattern of consumer consumption of information, movies, music, television and entertainment as well as the competitive nature of M&E companies assure that those that take advantage of big data to augment what they know about their business, will continue to be leaders. They will continue to invent new and better business processes and efficiencies and they will do so by evolving their Information Architecture in an impactful manner.
MediaGuru is a Global Services Company offering end-to-end solutions in the area of content digitization and preservation, turnkey technology projects and digital media from our offices in UAE, Singapore, South Africa and India.