More Data, More Problems?

This past weekend at the Legends of Summer concert at Yankee Stadium, Jay Z rapped his famous line "more money, more problems." As I stood there, in the 99 degree heat, watching a man with jewelry on him worth more than all the jewelry I will probably ever own, on stage in front of thousands of his fans, I wondered "did having more money really bring Jay Z more problems?!"

I obviously understand the concept. The more of something you have, the more you have to deal with it and manage it. Same goes for big data. The world suddenly is overwhelmed by all the information available at our fingertips. According to Google's Eric Schmidt, in 2 days, humans can create the same amount of information that it took from the beginning of time until 2003 to create.

As someone who spends most of their day using numbers and results to prove that an ad campaign was effective, or that a target consumer is in X, Y o r Z advertising medium, I was nodding my head while reading the Harvard Business Review article Advertising Analytics 2.0. I was in total agreement with the statement about how all of the new data can take an existing marketing budget but re-allocate it and create a 10-50% performance increase. Too often I see media bought and sold based on what people like or don't like, all while ignoring statistics.

Check out one Big Data Evangelist's POV

But then I read about Netflix knowing "House of Cards" was going to be a huge success before they even began filming, because they had so much data on consumers they knew what it took to make a hit show.

Is this scary?

Well, Netflix has over 30 million subscribers, and knows what those subscribers watch and when they watch and what they like. I'd be concerned if they were just sitting on that data and crossing their fingers hoping for the best financially...especially in this economy.

For a second, I was worried I was being brainwashed by Netflix, and whoever else was targeting me based on my online behavior.

But then I realized: I'm too busy to research the millions of shows and movies and products there are out there. It could legitimately take me a year to research the best volumizing shampoo now that I have Amazon, and can have any brand of shampoo in the world shipped to me. Same goes for TV, I know it takes a few episodes to get hooked, but then if I don't get hooked...that's time I will never get back. If someone else is going to plug in a few numbers, track my behavior and recommend for me within moments what I am going to like best, and in fact I am going to absolutely love it ... maybe I should just thank them.