Big Data and Web Analytics

Web analytics is the process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a website. This involves
tracking, reviewing and reporting data to measure web activity, including the use of a website
and its components, such as webpages, images and videos.

Data collected through web analytics may include traffic sources, referring sites, page views,
paths taken and conversion rates. The compiled data often forms a part of customer relationship
management analytics (CRM analytics) to facilitate and streamline better business decisions.

Web analytics enables a business to retain customers, attract more visitors and increase the
dollar volume each customer spends.

Analytics can help in the following ways:

• Determine the likelihood that a given customer will repurchase a product after
purchasing it in the past.

• Personalize the site to customers who visit it repeatedly.

• Monitor the amount of money individual customers or specific groups of customers

spend.

• Observe the geographic regions from which the most and the least customers visit
the site and purchase specific products.

• Predict which products customers are most and least likely to buy in the future.

The objective of web analytics is to serve as a business metric for promoting specific products
to the customers who are most likely to buy them and to determine which products a specific
customer is most likely to purchase. This can help improve the ratio of revenue to marketing
costs.

In addition to these features, web analytics may track the clickthrough and drilldown behavior
of customers within a website, determine the sites from which customers most often arrive, and
communicate with browsers to track and analyze online behavior. The results of web analytics
are provided in the form of tables, charts and graphs.
Follow these steps as part of the web analytics processes.

Web analytics process

The web analytics process involves the following steps:

1. Setting goals. The first step in the web analytics process is for businesses to
determine goals and the end results they are trying to achieve. These goals can
include increased sales, customer satisfaction and brand awareness. Business goals
can be both quantitative and qualitative.

2. Collecting data. The second step in web analytics is the collection and storage of
data. Businesses can collect data directly from a website or web analytics tool, such
as Google Analytics. The data mainly comes from Hypertext Transfer
Protocol requests -- including data at the network and application levels -- and can
be combined with external data to interpret web usage. For example, a
user's Internet Protocol address is typically associated with many factors, including
geographic location and clickthrough rates.

3. Processing data. The next stage of the web analytics funnel involves businesses
processing the collected data into actionable information.

4. Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs). In web analytics, a KPI is a

quantifiable measure to monitor and analyze user behavior on a website. Examples
include bounce rates, unique users, user sessions and on-site search queries.

5. Developing a strategy. This stage involves implementing insights to formulate

strategies that align with an organization's goals. For example, search queries
 conducted on-site can help an organization develop a content strategy based on
what users are searching for on its website.

6. Experimenting and testing. Businesses need to experiment with different

strategies in order to find the one that yields the best results. For example, A/B
testing is a simple strategy to help learn how an audience responds to different
content. The process involves creating two or more versions of content and then
displaying it to different audience segments to reveal which version of the content
performs better.

Big Data and Marketing

This is a well-known fact of marketing and profit-making that the more you know your

customer the more you can abide by what is liked by them and can set price, content, and user

interface accordingly. Big Data can be understood by any data expert and can provide really

insightful conclusions hence derived which can be implemented in the marketing strategies and

processes to get the maximum output from them.

1. Building Better Customer Relationships

Knowing the customer and their preferences can enable the marketing team to understand the

decision-making of the customer before choosing any particular brand. This can enable the

marketing team to make the customer journey suitable and smooth.

For example, If the data states that there is any e-commerce platform the consumers are

inclined towards due to their membership rewards and loyalty program. The marketing team

can focus on building strategies to promote the benefits of their loyalty program to attract such

customers.

Also having the data about the customers and their preferences can enable the online stores to

show them the right items at the right time in the form of their recommended items to promote

the other products as well and making the customer journey more convenient throughout their

portal.
Knowing the customers and the concepts like KYC not just maintains the authenticity of the

user but also helps the businesses in grouping the users to cater to them the right content while

marketing at the right platform. Meaning if the users are of a certain age group that uses social

media the company can go ahead with promoting themselves online via pages

and advertisements.

2. Appropriate Brand Positioning

Big Data eases the brand or product positioning by just being the source of various

categorizations and groupings. Having data about the growth and customer base of the brand

can help the businesses inadequately positioning their brand in the market among the right

customers.

This is the most widely established marketing strategy which is akin to differentiation. Having

the idea about why your brand is popular amongst which consumer base can help in

determining the niche as well as in making a strategy that represents the brand and can grab

the attention of other customers as well.

Brand positioning can be done based on various pointers like price, quality, targeted audience,

etc with the purpose of making the brand gain momentum amongst a particular group. This

kind of marketing strategy not just works in improving sales but also creates competition in the

market.

3. Optimizing Prices

Big Data can enable the companies to have the details about the price of the competitors and

inflation rates over the years, also this can help the companies understand the purchasing power

of the users of the brand so that they can subtly stick to that without incurring any losses.

Price regulation is not something really controlled by the marketing team but yet they can

provide suggestive measures to justify the prices kept by the company for their products.
Also, the data of the changed prices can help the company informing further strategies to clear

the stocks of the old products during the sales or make the adequate price decision of the new

planned launched products in the market.

4. Designing Campaigns and Advertisements

Big Data is also collected from social media, considering that the marketing team can have a

look at what is being in trend so that they can adapt the same for their marketing strategy.

Something with which the audience can relate and is of a good cause ends up getting the

attention of the brand. For example, the ‘Stop The Beauty Test’ campaign by Dove is one

such campaign asking the women to share their stories with them. Campaigns, mainly social

media campaigns or digital marketing tricks, are the most widely reaching marketing tactic for

the companies nowadays as it focuses on the idea primarily and it is designed in a way that

everyone can participate from their various accounts.

Here the audience engagement is the focal point of the marketing teams. Also, big data provides

insights into the channels which are able to deliver the best results. This can allow the company

to invest in their channels accordingly with the related advertisements.

Advertising the products is also a stage of marketing, in fact, most of the marketing is done by

advertising the products on various channels, so if a brand takes up a practical approach about

the data it has of results by various channels they can completely modify their marketing

strategies.

Conclusion

This is a clear enough fact that the more data a brand acquires the more avenues open for them

to gain momentum in the market, to improve their services, to get better engagement from the

customers, and also promote their brands and reach the right customers.

Strategy improvisation, looking for better alternatives and adequate channels for marketing is

only possible with the basis of a strong conclusion provided by the big data. As the data gets

interpreted notably helps in making better and informed decisions in a lot of industries and
steps, big data having a remarkable application in marketing, is just yet another field.
Three types of big data for marketers

Marketers are interested in three types of big data: customer, financial, and operational. Each
type of data is typically obtained from different sources and stored in different locations.

1. Customer data helps marketers understand their target audience. The obvious
data of this type are facts like names, email addresses, purchase histories, and
web searches. Just as important, if not more so, are indications of your audience’s
attitudes that may be gathered from social media activity, surveys, and online
communities.
2. Financial data helps you measure performance and operate more efficiently.
Your organization’s sales and marketing statistics, costs, and margins fall into
this category. Competitors’ financial data such as pricing can also be included in
this category.
3. Operational data relates to business processes. It may relate to shipping and
logistics, customer relationship management systems, or feedback from hardware
sensors and other sources. Analysis of this data can lead to improved performance
and reduced costs.

Big Data And Fraud

Big data analytics is an effective solution for identifying behavioural patterns and
establishing strategies to help detect and prevent fraud in various business sectors.
Most companies are not aware of the information they have and how to leverage, analyze and
understand it, which can result in the loss of a large amount of potentially useful data by
normalizing fraud and other criminal activities in their processes and make them difficult to
prevent and detect.
Fraud detection through Big data analysis, data mining and machine learning models uses
trends, patterns and behaviors to detect and prevent suspicious activities in purchasing
processes, credit activities, accounts or transactions, internal and external processes, among
others. This makes possible to automatically detect fraud and allow organizations to
consolidate, map and normalize large amounts of data that can be effectively analyzed to design
strategies that detect and establish connections between anomalous trends, notice a cybernetic
attack or mark a security breach.
Fighting Fraudulent Accounts
Banks try to make opening new accounts as easy as possible for new customers, and they try
to minimize restrictions on new account usage. However, this also opens up avenues for fraud,
especially if scammers use false identities to open the accounts. Stolen social security numbers
and fake ID cards go a long way at the bank.
Fraudulent account takeovers are also an issue in bank fraud cases. These takeovers occur
when a fraudster has an existing account transferred into their control using stolen customer
information and a few changes to contact details.
Fighting these accounts is all the more important since data breaches are still prevalent, and
they can expose millions of customers’ account details. Plus, phone and email scams allow
criminals to obtain private data like personal bank account numbers easily. Even the
coronavirus outbreak has inspired a fresh wave of email scams that trick users into installing
malware or sending billing details to a scammer.
Detecting fraudulent transactions from fake or compromised accounts requires an expert eye
for data mining and machine learning systems that can handle massive amounts of data.
Financial institutions must invest heavily in the detection of all kinds of financial fraud,
whether the root of the fraud was a phishing email or a stolen credit card.

Preventing Credit Card Fraud

Credit card information is easy for criminals to steal and use for fraudulent purchases. Financial
institutions periodically reissue credit cards and allow customers to freeze their accounts
manually, but these safeguards are rarely enough to prevent fraud.
Another potential source of credit card fraud is when account owners claim an income level
that is higher than what they actually make, enabling them to open a larger line of credit than
they deserve. This happens with both new and current customers, so financial institutions need
to be proactive in monitoring all accounts for signs of fraud.
Data mining allows companies to compare customers’ activity with comparable peers and
receive accurate financial fraud detection warnings. Although every customer has unique
spending habits, there are important trends related to mode, method, and amount of each
transaction.
Fraud analysis programs must work to detect fraudulent transactions in a matter of seconds so
that the card provider can stop the transaction and contact the customer for follow-up. This
requires large amounts of computing power but is an essential investment for both customer
experience and loss prevention.

Detecting Insurance Fraud

Insurance fraud includes all sorts of medical, automobile, and property insurance coverage that
can be manipulated for financial gain. Financial institutions that offer insurance services must
be proactive in implementing new systems to detect this fraud.
Examples include inflated claims or lying about the cause of damage in property insurance
claims. As with other types of fraud detection, insurance fraud can be detected with big data
mining and AI.

Big Data and risk assessment

The application of big data in risk management helps eliminate the culture of visceral
decision making by companies. The focus on data-driven decision making helps devise
rational decisions while advancing the maturity of the organization’s security culture.

In data-driven risk management, companies collect and analyze data from multiple sources and
use it to preemptively identify, anticipate and mitigate problems in business operations. The
use of Big Data, AI and machine learning helps companies decide what problems may arise in
most business activities to devise solutions before they occur.
What is a risk assessment based on Big Data?
A data risk assessment is the process of reviewing locations that store and manage sensitive
data, including intellectual property and personally identifiable information.

Why is data risk assessment important?

A data risk assessment helps business understand all potential threat vectors that can lead to
security or privacy breaches by taking a systematic approach, reviewing where sensitive data
is located, who accesses it, and any changes made to data access controls.

What parameters can be evaluated?

• Legal, regulatory and industry compliance posture.

• The organization’s baselines for risk tolerance.
• Potential vulnerabilities that increase the likelihood of a data leak or breach.
• Key security performance indicators.
• Additional data security investment needs.
Use Cases

Credit risk (predictive power)

Can be used to build predictive models related to future demand and supply. Social media and
marketing data, as well as data from all types of transactions, will provide deeper visibility into
customer behavior.

Operational fraud risk management

Used to create an effective system for detecting and preventing fraudulent activity and
regulatory non-compliance. New technologies analyze standard information to detect fraud
before it becomes a problem, helping organizations to be legally defensible, especially in fraud
cases, by allowing them to easily collect and access data.

Qualitative risk management

Covers the impact of risk on the business or project in numbers. This numerical information
projects the risk analysis according to time and cost contingencies.

Quantitative risk management

Covers the impact of risk on the business or project in numbers. This numerical information
projects the risk analysis according to time and cost contingencies.

Stages of risk assessment

Risk identification: For organizations, risk can originate from internal and/or external
environments. These risks can prevent the company from achieving its objectives and goals.
This tool allows the integration of internal and external data points to identify emerging risks,
which may be latent in nature.

Risk assessment and prioritization: Aligning data with risk profiles and indicators allows to
effectively profile risks in terms of impact and probability. Thus, analytical models can be built
to detect potential risks, fully assess their financial and other associated impacts, and create an
analytical framework that can begin to balance financial and strategic impacts with investment
to fully mitigate and manage risks.
Risk response and mitigation: Various risk modeling techniques are adopted to simulate
“what-if” scenarios by integrating various data elements, which helps decide the most optimal
response strategy. Data analysis can also be leveraged to track the effectiveness of the
implementation of deployed mitigation plans.

Risk monitoring: Timely and robust risk monitoring is critical in today’s dynamic
environment. Identifying key risk indicators for each risk is important to measure trends and
movement of data parameters linked to risk.

Risk reporting: At this stage, scheduled and on-demand reports are generated, enabling real-
time insight into risks and helping to keep track of past learnings.

Big Data and Algorithmic Trading

Application of computer and communication techniques has stimulated the rise of algorithm

trading. Algorithm trading is the use of computer programs for entering trading orders, in which

computer programs decide on almost every aspect of the order, including the timing, price, and

quantity of the order etc.

Role of Big Data in Algorithmic Trading

1. Technical Analysis : Technical Analysis is the study of prices and price behavior, using
charts as the primary tool.

2. Real Time Analysis : The automated process enables computer to execute financial trades at

speeds and frequencies that a human trader cannot.

3. Machine Learning : With Machine Learning, algorithms are constantly fed data and actually

get smarter over time by learning from past mistakes, logically deducing new conclusions based

on past results and creating new techniques that make sense based on thousands of unique

factors.

How Big Data can be used for Algorithmic Trading

There are several standard modules in a proprietary algorithm trading system, including trading

strategies, order execution, cash management and risk management. Trading strategies are the

core of an automated trading system. Complex algorithms are used to analyze data (price data

and news data) to capture anomalies in market, to identify profitable patterns, or to detect the

strategies of rivals and take advantages of the information. Various techniques are used in

trading strategies to extract actionable information from the data, including rules, fuzzy rules,

statistical methods, time series analysis, machine learning, as well as text mining.

⦁ Technical Analysis and Rules

⦁ Using of Statistics

⦁ Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning Based Algorithm Trading

⦁ Text Mining for Algorithm Trading

⦁ Levels the Playing Field to Stabilize Online Trade.

Algorithmic trading is the current trend in the financial world and machine learning helps

computers to analyze at rapid speed. The real-time picture that big data analytics provides gives

the potential to improve investment opportunities for individuals and trading firms.

⦁ Estimation of outcomes and returns.

Access to big data helps to mitigate probable risks on online trading and making precise

predictions. Financial analytics helps to tie up principles that affect trends, pricing and price

behavior.

⦁ Deliver accurate predictions

Big data can be used in combination with machine learning and this helps in making a decision

based on logic than estimates and guesses. The data can be reviewed and applications can be

developed to update information on a regular basis for making accurate predictions.

⦁ Backtesting Strategy

One of the features of Algorithmic Trading is the ability to backtest. It can be tough for traders
to know what parts of their trading system work and what doesn’t work since they can’t run

their system on past data. With algo trading, you can run the algorithms based on past data to

see if it would have worked in the past. This ability provides a huge advantage as it lets the user

remove any flaws of a trading system before you run it live.

Big Data and Healthcare

The healthcare industry historically has produced a great amount of information. While a lot
of data is still stored in hard copy form, the current trend of massive digitization is going to
improve this. There is a necessity to improve the quality of medical services and, at the same
time, reduce the price. Big Data promises to perform a lot of medical and healthcare functions.

As we can see, Big Data has had a great impact on our lives. We are able to see changes in
many industries. Healthcare is one of the most promising fields where Big Data is applied. It
is obvious that this trend in technology constantly increases benefits and reduces prices. The
latest technology helps with patient access and the patient’s experience with their healthcare
provider. Moreover, it is solving a lot of global troubles the mankind is faced with.

As the world population is growing, the development of predictive analytics is significant to

foresee epidemics, improve treatment methods, etc. Using Big Data correctly can give an
opportunity to avoid some diseases and improve the quality of life. Health professionals are
able to store a lot of significant information.

So, let’s discuss 7 ways of using Big Data analytics in the healthcare field.

Why is Big Data a breakthrough for healthcare?

Big Data technology in the healthcare field creates a lot of positive and life-saving outcomes.
Big Data in medicine should be processed. Speaking about medicine we are able to claim that
the data processing is vital because any mistake or failure can literally cost somebody’s life.

There are 6 types of information in the healthcare field:

 o Social media data. It’s obvious that this type is connected with the collection of
data from different healthcare apps and even personal profiles on Facebook or
Twitter.
o Machine-to-machine data. The information is received from different wearable
devices like fitness trackers, smartwatches, sensors, etc.
o Financial data. Payments that were done for healthcare services or any other papers
related to financial processes are significant.
o Biometric data. Fingerprints, X-Rays images, MRI scans, etc.
o Data created by human. For example, your paper medical documents, medical
cards, EMR (electronic medical records), etc.
o Scientific and research data. The analysis of new medicine, their influence on our
body, negative effects, etc.
Nowadays, Big Data application in healthcare is based on the highly qualified and fast
treatment process. For instance, healthcare reforms in the USA made human beings pay more
attention to the efficiency of accomplished therapy. Big Data analysis and processing
technologies allow doctors to get a salary or payment not for the care process but for their
abilities to heal the clients’ diseases quickly and keep their health in good condition.

Moreover, using Big Data in the healthcare field provides an opportunity to predict the
expenses. A huge amount of different statistical data like the number of people with chronic
disease, complaints against specific doctors, the number of next visits, epidemic indices, and
so on.

Healthcare specialists can use Big Data analysis in order to see the frequency of next
visits, skipped appointments, the full time of surgery, if doctors have enough medical supplies,
etc. Consequently, these processes are able to enlarge the number of surgeries and, at the same
time, reduce the prices. Specialists may perform post-surgery treatment more quickly and, as a
result, provide more patients with qualified help.

Consequently, all these improvements allow medical services providers to decrease the time of
patients’ hospital stay or reduce the number of second hospitalizations.

Big Data analytics in the healthcare field consists of several types:

o Descriptive analytics
o Diagnostic analytics
o Predictive analytics
o Prescriptive analytics
As you can see, this is a kind of cycle that starts with the determination of the problem to the
solutions on how to avoid these troubles in the future.

Now, it is high time to look through the methods of using Big Data analysis in the healthcare
field more precisely.
Big Data use cases in healthcare

Of course, there are a lot of ways of using Big Data in healthcare. Let’s discuss the most
common of them.

Predictive analytics and quick diagnosis

Experts from CSS Insight have claimed that the cost of wearable devices is able to become $25
billion by the end of 2019. Nowadays people utilize such devices as fitness trackers and
smartwatches to collect and analyze information about their heart rhythm and physical activity.
Moreover, there is an opportunity for the clients to send all collected data directly to their
family doctor.

This is vital for the prediction of inherited diseases. For instance, the patients at risk of
developing a specific disease (e.g. diabetes) can benefit from preventive care.

Even if a person doesn’t have any health-related problems, it’s important to collect information.
As a result, this process is able to help doctors or medical specialists create flexible databases.
After that, a computer with artificial experience may make suggestions for each patient
according to the information collected from other human beings.

So, artificial intelligence is very helpful. The analysis of information collected by trackers by
neural networks allows patients to figure out the disease. As a result, they can take in-time
measures to predict and prevent it. Now using Big Data doctors are able to predict the results
of their treatment, considering what kind of lifestyle the patient leads.

Finance management
Machine learning can help us analyze bills and funds. As a result, we are given an opportunity
to reduce the number of mistakes and embezzlements. Considering patients’ financial abilities
and their demand in service Big Data allows forming price plans. As a result, Big Data is able
to provide positive changes in the healthcare field. Moreover, these systems are able to bring
positive modifications to a habitual payment system. So, the clients will be provided with an
opportunity to pay for the quality of medical assistance. One more benefit is a chance to manage
expenses for medicine and labor of hospital stuff.

Medical research operations

It is obvious that this part is about predictive modeling in the development of new remedies.
Big Data tools and statistical algorithms are able to manage clinical trials. So, it’s easier to
recruit people to test new drugs and find better match treatments to individual patients. By the
way, this technology allows reducing trial failures and speeding new treatments to market.
Analyzing clinical trials and patients records give an opportunity to discover adverse effects
before drugs reach the market. Moreover, there is the application that is able to process the
results and, according to them, do the medicine rank more personalized.

As a result, doctors are able to prescribe new drugs and treatment methods. By the way, these
procedures in the segregation of disease patterns help specialists distinguish risks.

Innovative business models

Of course, Big data in healthcare can bring you profit for the business. Data aggregators are
able to give third parties analyzed and assembled data blocks. There are some ideas. For
instance, if a pharmaceutical company wants to see or use clinical records of the people that
took a certain drug, it may be possible to purchase this information.

Prediction of mass outbreaks

Big Data allows scientists to build social models of population health. According to them,
doctors can create predictive models of outbreaks progress. These algorithms are able to
analyze disease outbreaks. As a result, doctors are given an opportunity to create more
accurately targeted vaccines faster.

Turning a great amount of information into actionable information allows utilizing data to
identify needs, provide services, and predict and prevent crises. It’s a wonderful benefit for the
population of our world.

According to the Forbes article, there are four hospitals in Paris that have been using Big Data
algorithms to how many patients are expected to be at each hospital daily and hourly. As a
result, it is possible to count how many specialists are necessary to work.

Telemedicine

The evolution of online video conferences, smartphones, wireless devices, and wearables gives
telemedicine an opportunity to provide patients with medical services on distance.
Nowadays healthcare technologies are able not only to give a primary diagnosis but also to
consult patients and monitor their health. Sometimes it is even possible to use telesurgery. As
a result, doctors can lead operations using robots and high-speed real-time information
delivery, but they are not near the patients during the surgery.

Doctors often use telemedicine to prevent hospitalization and readmission. Moreover,

telemedicine is able to decrease the expenses because it can be unnecessary to visit the
specialist in order to create a personalized treatment. Patients are able to avoid lines and doctors
don’t need to waste time filling documents and giving unnecessary consultations.

Real-time health monitoring

Returning to the wearable devices like fitness trackers and wristbands, it is important to
underline their ability to monitor the health of their users in a real-time mode and provide
doctors with information and changes. So, data from all sensors can be analyzed instantly and,
if something is wrong, an alert will be automatically sent to the doctor or another specialist. As
a result, the doctor is able to contact the patient without further delay and give them all the
necessary instructions.

So, as you can see the healthcare field and Big Data can bring a lot of benefits to each other.
On the other hand, it is important to remember that Big Data requires not only hardware but
also appropriate software that will be able to provide good functionality. That’s why creating
a medical app needs experience in working with Big Data solutions.

Problems with Big Data in healthcare

Of course, if you have decided to work with Big Data technologies, you need to know
everything about possible factors that can bring some negative influence. So, it is high time to
discuss the reasons that cause problems:
1. Lack of qualified IT specialists. Specialists that are able to combine managing
software and controlling IT support in clinics are quite rare. Of course, talented
doctors are vital, but taking into consideration the fact that Big Data is constantly
growing, IT specialists are becoming more and more significant. That’s why it’s
necessary to fill this gap in the healthcare field.
2. Low financing. Healthcare data solutions face the problem of financial limitations.
So, the government doesn’t give enough money for the implementation of Big Data
development in healthcare.
3. Security. Nobody will debate that this is one of the most important issues. Personal
information is extremely valuable, so it is obvious that the personal medical data or
EHRs (Electronic Health Records) should not be open to third parties. Some studies
have shown that in the medical field the data breaches happen quite often. Of course,
every information breach may have dramatical consequences. Moreover, to start
working with Big Data, doctors or other specialists should have access. It is obvious
that providing a few specialists with this access doesn’t cause harm, but what about
the big group of specialists? So, there is a problem. To solve this problem efficiently,
it’s important to choose good and experienced Big Data vendors that are able to
supply secure and well-supported distribution.
4. Challenge of interoperability. There are still some factors that don’t allow a lot of
healthcare systems to cooperate. It’s high time to discuss some of them:
o No specific standards because all of them depend on providers and regions
o Discrepancies in privacy laws. Different states have discrepancies in their laws. That
means providers should worry about the security while they exchange personal
medical data
o Old school approach. As strange as it sounds but some healthcare providers still
utilize paper health records despite the great development of digital technologies. Of
course, it is necessary for these documents to be digitized.
 o Semantic challenge. Healthcare applications and systems may use different
terminology that can create incompatibility between the systems.
So, we have provided you with seven Big Data use cases in the healthcare field. As a result, it
is possible to highlight three main trends in this area:

o The experience of visiting doctors improves, as well as the quality of treatment. So,
the patients are able to be more satisfied
o The population’s health will be better over time
o The expenses on medical services will reduce
The medical industry is constantly changing and Big Data provides a lot of improvements, but
there is still a lot of work to do. Big Data in the medical field has a lot of advantages that can
help make better-informed decisions, improve operations, etc. Even today doctors use Big Data
for early identification of illnesses, diseases or, what is even more significant, prediction of
some health-related problems. I am sure that nobody will deny that prevention is much better
than treatment. So if you are ready to tackle some troubles while using Big Data in healthcare,
it’s important to decide what kind of approach you will be using.

Big Data and Advertizing

To be more specific, we’ve singled out some key challenges where applying Big Data hits
the spot and helps advertisers to answer such pressing questions like:

• Who to target?
• What ad to show?
• How to measure results?
• How to improve performance?
• How to learn from the past?

Who to target: Big Data allows smart segmentation

One of the most important questions advertisers need to answer when placing an ad is “Who
should the ad be shown to?”. Thanks to Big Data, today you can successfully segment the
target audience to improve ad performance.

Segmentation means dividing the target audience into several groups. The main reason
segmentation is crucial for the advertising industry is the fact that it helps to create a unique
selling proposition (USP) suitable for the world people in this sector live in.

For example, the same USP both for young women and mature men is unlikely to be high-
performing. It is better to create different USPs for each segment because propositions,
advertising creatives, text, pictures, and other factors that influence the conversion will vary.

Traditionally there are four main types of audience segmentation in marketing:

 • Behavioral segmentation is usually based on browsing data about online behavior
which may include browsing habits, spending habits, purchasing habits, brand loyalty,
previous interactions, and many others.
• Social-demographic segmentation including age, education, gender, ethnicity, level of
income, and others.
• Geographic segmentation that involves country, region, city, and such.
• Psychographic segmentation including hobbies, lifestyle interests, values, religious
beliefs, opinions, preferences, and so on.

Customer segmentation is a powerful approach in advertising that has been showing good
results for years. All advertisers use some form of segmentation to target their ads. However,
there is a more advanced segmentation approach called dynamic segmentation.

Dynamic segmentation uses real-time data to build ever-changing groups of people. It means
that dynamic segmentation technology includes and excludes people from the target segment
by constantly checking whether they fail to meet the predefined criteria.

There are already a number of products on the market for this type of segmentation. Among
them is Dynamics 365 Marketing from Microsoft that besides creating static segments allows
creating dynamic segmentation. It is made using query blocks where the user specifies all the
conditions for dynamic segmentation

As a result, dynamic segmentation is able to bring better performance of ad campaigns due to

more advanced and smarter targeting.

What to show: Big Data allows hyper-personalization

Big Data technology helps answer this question as it provides valuable insight about
demographics, geographic location, likes, and preferences of your potential customers.
By analyzing this data, the advertiser can develop more accurate customer profiles to better
personalize their ads.

The majority of marketers (60%) believe that personalization is a key component to improve
the campaign results. Personalization is a very important factor for Generation Z who grew
up on digital and social media and now expect a high level of targeting and personalization.
What’s interesting is that 40% of them admit that they would stop visiting a site if it couldn’t
“anticipate what they needed, liked, or wanted.”

A great example of using Big Data here is dynamic creative. In simple words, dynamic
creative advertising means showing different ads to different people. If everyone saw one
and the same advertisement previously, now advertisers have a possibility to show different
ads to certain groups of people or even individuals based on parameters like gender, profession,
location, device, buying behavior, language, weather, and much more. Dynamic creative is
able to perfect your ad performance by fine-tuning:

• ad design for different devices;

• context to ad; or
• stage of the purchase funnel.
For example, dynamic advertising from Facebook allows up to 10 images or videos, and 5 text
options including body text, title, description, and call to action (CTA).

Example of Facebook automotive dynamic advertisement

Source: hunchads.com

To have the ability to run effective dynamic creatives, most advertisers make use of Creative
Management Platform (CMP) and Dynamic creative optimization (DCO). Creative
Management Platform is a solution to design and control design versions of the ads needed for
a DCO campaign. Dynamic creative optimization, on the other hand, is the real-time
technological process that manages hyper-personalized advertising. Simply put, CMP
provides the right dynamic design and DCO – dynamic content to the end-user.

Bannerflow platform, for example, allows not only to create a range of ad variations to connect
with specific viewers but also to optimize live dynamic creatives in real-time.

Personalization with dynamic creative optimization by Bannerflow

Source: bannerflow.com

As a result, by using dynamic creative technologies you can:

• launch ads with a number of different combinations of creatives to serve each

particular individual;
• hyper-personalize the advertising in view of customers interests;
• find the best, high-performing combination for your ad campaign to drive
performance; and
• improve ROAS by targeting groups of potential customers who are likely to convert.

How to measure: Big Data enables robust attribution models

According to Gartner, about 74% of CMOs are planning to spend more on digital advertising
in 2021 than in 2020. But how to evaluate the effective ad channels to understand where to
invest more? Which ads are driving sales and which are not?

As we’ve already discussed in our article about Ad Tech challenges and

opportunities, everyone in the advertising industry needs transparency. Advertisers no
longer are able to justify ad budgets without providing measurable Return On Advertising
Spend (ROAS).

The solution lies in attribution that helps to evaluate how the conversion is distributed across
different channels. Thus, more advertisers are putting priority on ad measurement and
attribution.

The main goal of attribution is to help determine the actions of the person which lead to the
desired result starting from the moment a person clicks the ad and the conversion. Most
traditional rule-based attribution models which mostly rely on cookies, first-click, last-click
attribution are not as effective as wished. Facebook states that almost 45% of digital
touchpoints are missed by traditional measurement tools.

Big Data offers more effective approaches to measuring ad results and attributions. One of
them is the data-driven attribution model. This model is based on Big Data and aims to
understand the links between advertising itself and the customer’s response. Unlike the rule-
based attribution, the data-driven model takes into account myriads of data, for example:

• number of ad interactions;
• ad display order;
• advertisement itself;
• device used; and
• other factors determining which keywords and clicks are most effective for achieving
results and similar.

As a result, data-driven attribution models allow companies to understand the way people
convert, determine top-performing ads, the most effective ad channels, the best time for
ad display, the best locations to target, and a lot more than this. The result is the transparency
of advertising results and an optimized ad budget.

Tech giants like Google and Facebook for example, already offer data-driven attribution
models in their solutions. In Google, a data-driven attribution model is available in
Google Analytics 360, Google Ads, and Campaign Manager. Attributions in Facebook and
Google Analytics are very similar but have some differences. Google Analytics, for example,
measures by session, while Facebook both by session and by impression.
Example of Facebook data-driven attribution model
Source: facebook.com

At MindK we also helped our client who workes with TV and radio ads in the United States to
solve the challenge with measuring ads results and attributions. The client required a strong
automation tool able to help them build, support, and analyze radio and TV advertising
campaigns in no time. As a result, we build a data-driven marketing attribution platform,
called AIM Analytics, that allows the company to track both ad successes and failures and
come up with winning advertising strategies again and again.
Intelligent marketing attribution platform AIM Analytics build by MindK

Check out a detailed project overview

How to improve: Big Data allows bringing the most valuable ad data right at your fingertips

Digital advertising agencies use advertising data analytics to conduct a comprehensive

analysis of all ad campaign indicators. The main problem with data is that almost from 80%
to 90% of all the data both collected and generated by organizations is recognized as
unstructured. Worse still, its volumes are growing rapidly.
Difference between structured and unstructured data
Source: docs.paperspace.com

The good news is that by means of data analytics, we are able to turn the unstructured data into
a structured one that is easier to understand. The main goal of big data analytics in
advertising is to monitor, identify and correct mistakes made when setting up an
advertising campaign, as well as to increase the ROI.

It is pretty straightforward here – if you can structure, visualize, and analyze the data, you can
gain valuable insight into what your audience wants and needs. It likely will influence your
advertising strategy, make your efforts more relevant, ads more effective, and ultimately more
profitable.

Here at MindK, we face the need to apply data analytics in every project we take (and this need
is not only relevant for the advertising industry). For example, one of our clients faced the
challenge to analyze the results (log data) of the ads that are running on hundreds of radio
stations and channels. These stations send the log data in different formats, which makes the
information very hard to analyze. We build a system that transforms this unstructured raw log-
level data into clear and transparent information to better understand ad performance.
An intelligent marketing attribution platform we’ve already mentioned in the previous
paragraph provides a 360-degree ad campaign analytics that takes into account a myriad of
variables: copy, stations, formats, creative, length, and so forth. All this information is
presented in the form of graphs, diagrams, reports, and heatmaps that bring all the important
ad performance metrics together.

Visualization of ad performance results in intelligent marketing attribution platform AIM

Analytics build by MindK
How to learn from the past: Big Data unlocks the power of predictions

Predictive advertising involves the use of real-time predictive analysis technologies based on
behavioral patterns seen in historical data to solve marketing problems. Such analytical tools
are not new and are widely used, for example, by investors to predict the situation on the stock
exchange, or by meteorologists for weather forecasting.

Predictive advertising is a powerful combination of Big Data and machine learning. To

analyze information and make “predictions”, advertisers use a cloud-based set of algorithms,
platforms, and databases which is called a predictor.

The predictor automatically processes a huge amount of data and, based on it, makes real-time
assumptions about any given situation in the future. Those predictions can be used for a variety
of purposes, from understanding who is likely to click on an ad to assuming whether this certain
click will end up in conversion.

Here are only a few examples of how advertisers are using predictive analytics:

• Creating look-alike audiences that help companies expand their advertising message
to audiences that may potentially become loyal customers. You can hardly guess that,
for example, Facebook Similar Audiences as well as Google’s Lookalike Audience are
using predictive advertising to analyze the behavior of the audience and anticipate
needs thus increasing click-through rates of the advertisements.
• Improving cross- and up-selling: by analyzing buying behavior and predicting future
buying patterns, advertisers can create high-quality content specifically for people’s
buying habits. For example, Amazon has already been using predictive advertising
technology for cross- and up-selling.
• Optimizing ad campaigns: by means of predictive bidding technology, the bids can
be adjusted in real-time based on different factors like information about the session of
the user or similar. Such an approach allows Bing Ads and Google Ads to suggest click
and conversion-based bidding strategies by adjusting bids with an eye on users’
predicted tendency to click or convert.
• Retargeting: unlike typical retargeting when advertisers use data about previous user
actions, predictive retargeting enriches this data with intent user signals to widen the
targeting capabilities. For example, Criteo Predictive Search successfully used machine
learning to re-engage high-value users by means of Google Shopping campaigns.
• Reducing ad spend: all the predictive advertising approaches, from predictive
targeting to bid adjustments, allow marketers to reduce their wasted ad spend while
driving more ROI for their ad campaigns. IBM Watson Advertising states that it helped
its clients to experience a minimum 25% increase in ad performance.

The biggest edge of predictive advertising is that it can bring value to almost any advertising
campaign. Media advertising, for example, in spite of some specific challenges, has room for
opportunities.

Among the latest interesting news in this field is the fact that ad and innovation testing
platform Zappi has recently launched a predictive advertising tool called “Zappi Amplify
TV” focused on predicting TV ad effectiveness and return on investment. The system was
tested in partnership with PepsiCo and other global consumer brands. The system analyses key
ROI-driven areas like reach, resonance, response, risk, and return, as well as measures
creative sales impact and creative brand impact.