Big data. It's a term that has been thrown into free circles in recent months. It means that the data sets are so large that they become embarrassing. Face it, it's unobtrusive, but if used correctly the value of this data is second to none, and this statement could make Big Data. This article will explore the impact big data will have on marketing around the world (or has).

What is big data?

As I mentioned earlier, big data is a term that refers to data sets (or datasets) that are awkward to work with due to their size, complexity, or growth rate. For a data set to be considered "large", it typically has a size in excess of 50TB, although in some complex cases the size has risen to multiple petabytes. To put it into perspective, a petabyte is equivalent to 1 million gigabytes.

In recent times, some big data has become a buzzword. The reason for this is that it is a new concept or a newly discovered resource, but this is simply a recent technological development that is not enough to allow us to process data in an intelligent, insightful way.

Now that we can handle the analysis and interpretation of data though, it can be used in many ways and in many different industries.

Big Data Scale

Big Data is so different that - depending on the data set - it can have a more or less unlimited number of uses. This is partly because we live in such a massively data-saturated world.

Modern social media platforms illustrate this point perfectly. The well-known microblogging website Twitter clocks in at around 12 terabytes of data every day, and when you consider that this comes entirely from the mound of a 140-character “tweet,” it is indeed remarkable. These data are then interpreted and analyzed to form the basis for product sentiment analysis and final product improvements.

They handle even larger data sets at Facebook. Facebook collects over 500TB of data every day. This data includes status updates, likes, uploaded photos and all other interactions.

To a larger extent, it is estimated that 90% of the data in the world has been collected in the past 2 years. This means there is more data for the period between 2010 and 2012 than 1,000 years ago.

So, the undisputed data exists, but once you have it, what can you do about it?

Using Big Data

Unsurprisingly, it is big business in the business world. In the world of business intelligence, data can generally be divided into two groups. The first group is transaction data. Transactional data is collected around events such as online shopping, user journeys and logistics. The second group is interactive data. Interaction data is the collection of interactions between people around you. Think social media profiles, videos and photos. The social media example above is a perfect example of engagement data.

In Facebook Infrastructure - VP Jay Parikh - (relatively) famously said: "If you don't leverage big data, then you don't have big data, you just have a bunch of data." So what can be used?

Big data is becoming a big way for businesses to outperform their competitors. Case studies show that it can be used to increase market share, improve operating margins, and increase return on capital investment.

It can be used to improve products or services as well. Companies can analyze how a product is used, who uses it, what they think they will change.

Perhaps most frightening of all, big data can be used to learn about you. What you like, what you don’t like, and more places you’ve been. All of this can be used to target advertising and promote products. And consumer information is worth a lot of money and, if sold, could fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds. Why do you think Facebook is free?

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much that is possible.

More convenient

Big data is the exclusive resource of large enterprises with large sets of data and nearly unlimited computing resources. Now, this is not the case and now small and medium businesses and smaller organizations can take advantage of big data thanks to cloud computing. Big data analytics is now available as a service, which makes it more accessible to the masses without such a large initial capital outlay.

This level of competition between small and large businesses is leveled because now, to a certain extent, if you have data, you can use it.