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Analysing big data to target micro-audiences with cloud

By Nicole Broome, ITWeb contributor
Johannesburg, 25 Jan 2017
Andre Schoeman from Neotel explains how cloud enables big data.
Andre Schoeman from Neotel explains how cloud enables big data.

A small data analytics company in the UK - Cambridge Analytica - hit the news in 2016 claiming to have played a big part in influencing the UK's Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. In fact, the company claim Trump paid the firm $5 million last September to micro-target millions of US individuals through social media. This was achieved with psychographic profiling of each person's motivation and decision-making, which was then used to develop precise messaging that played on fears and biases to motivate votes for Trump.

The company claims its psychographic modelling gave them insight into where the electorate stood each day. It says it has a staggering 4000 - 5000 data points on each individual, allowing sophisticated computations and analysis. Big data analysis coupled with social media is an incredibly powerful tool. An example of how data points are gathered may include a Facebook quiz. 'What character would you be in The Game of Thrones', for example, can reveal a lot about attitudes and beliefs.

Neotel's Andre Schoeman, cloud expert and speaker at the ITWeb Cloud Summit 2017, takes a look how technology has evolved to make this possible, and how companies can access and analyse data and move quickly to respond to opportunities to grow audiences, identify key influencers and move people to action.

"How to we sell? How to reach more customers? How do we retain them? These are the questions companies ask. The answer lies in knowing your customers and aligning your messaging to influence them. One means has been to set up loyalty programmes that provide access to demographic information and allow certain assumptions to be made. But now, with social media and big data we have a much sharper tool to discover who buys what, where and when and link like-minded people across broad geo-spatial areas.

Unlocking business value

"We are in a time where information is king. Big data is the new buzzword, but to turn big data into meaningful insights with the potential unlock business value, you need to quickly make deductions and simplify," says Schoeman.

He believes the crux is in individualisation and customisation, segmenting your market in very narrow terms - to talk to individuals not groups. The rise of cloud computing, less expensive data, as well as the granularity and speed of the graphics-processing unit (GPU) have been game changing for data analytics processes.

"In the past, data-crunching processes were too slow for quick analysis and instant deployment, so certain assumptions were made about markets which could be way off the mark. But as data prices drop and speed increases, companies can slice and dice interactively to get keener insights into individuals and segment into smaller like-minded groups from the data collected.

"Traditionally this meant that companies would have had to invest a considerable amount for very large servers to fulfil this need. These servers would then work on a problem statement when required, but be dormant or idle for the rest - a massively unproductive resource.

"Cloud lends itself perfectly to rapidly scaling up resources for the user, and allows the user to pay for the resources as and when they are consumed. Therefore, cloud is a key enabler when it comes to the processing to deliver on intense individualisation of the marketing messages.

"These days you don't need massive hardware and can access cloud-based resources as you need them on a pay-as-you-grow basis. This gives you access to a very large capacity when you need it. The professional capabilities to ask the right questions, analyse the datasets and intelligently turn psychographic insights into influential messaging is the key," he concludes.

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