At first glance marketing and big data might seem like odd bedfellows, but they’re actually very complementary. Marketing is all about effectively reaching different audiences and data tells us what’s working and what’s not.
These days there’s more available data than most businesses and marketing teams know what to do with, which can lead to new opportunities if that data is accurately interpreted and effectively deployed.
Big Data in Marketing
Big data is becoming a fundamental tool in marketing. Data constantly informs marketing teams of customer behaviors and industry trends, and is used to optimize future efforts, create innovative campaigns and build lasting relationships with customers.
The following companies offer unified views of data, entire customer databases, campaign optimization, strategy services and other crucial data services to make marketing as effective as possible.
Centerfield
Location: Los Angeles, CA
What they do: Centerfield develops intelligent Big Data driven marketing and sales technology utilizing real time biddable media (RTB), automated call routing and customized scripting. Our proprietary platform, Dugout, combined with our 1500 person sales and retention center delivers new customers at scale to many of the leading brands worldwide.
Ogury
Location: New York, NY
What they do: Ogury has created a breakthrough advertising engine that delivers comprehensive audience interests, brand performance, privacy protection and sustainability within one technology stack, built and optimized for mobile. Advertisers working with Ogury benefit from fully visible impactful ads, future-proof targeting and unwavering protection. Publishers enjoy the rewards of a respectful user experience, incremental revenues and premium demand with Ogury’s solutions.
Location: New York, NY
What they do: Howl is a creator platform for the customer centric and product obsessed. Creators of every size use Howl’s commerce and payments technology to get better rates and easy payments for their big ideas. Creators on Howl earn more when they open doors for others, and have the tools to turn their craft into a business.
Integral Ad Science
Location: New York, NY
What they do: Integral Ad Science (IAS) is a global leader in digital ad verification, ensuring that ads are viewable by real people in safe and suitable environments. IAS’s mission is to be the global benchmark for trust and transparency in digital media quality for the world’s leading brands, publishers and platforms. We do this through data-driven technologies with actionable real-time signals and insight. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in New York, IAS works with thousands of top advertisers and premium publishers worldwide. IAS is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio of companies.
blueconic
Location: Boston
How it’s using big data in marketing: BlueConic’s customer data platform provides marketers with a single view of the customer. Unifying data from across channels and other sources, BlueConic gives marketer’s control over individual-level customer data. Consequently, companies can decrease bounce rates, enhance look-alike targeting and create more personal experiences for users.
Industry impact: The Boston Globe’s implementation of BlueConic resulted in “more engaged audience, more subscribers and increased advertising revenues,” according to the paper’s chief consumer revenue officer.
core digital media
Location: Playa Vista, Calif.
How it’s using big data in marketing: Core Digital Media utilizes predictive modeling to pinpoint hundreds of millions of daily online advertising impressions. Of these impressions, Core determines the probability of ad clicks by consumers, responses to consumer information requests and the expected value of these impressions for clients.
Industry impact: Between Core brands LowerMyBills.com and ClassesUSA.com, the company has lowered rates for more than five million consumers, saved them more than $3 billion and been visited online by more than two million potential students who were exposed to hundreds of university and college partners.
thoughtspot
Location: Palo Alto, Calif.
How it’s using big data in marketing: ThoughtSpot lets any employee, regardless of tech background, glean important insights from company data. The search and AI analytics platform works across industries and teams so that everyone from marketing managers to customer care representatives can pull the data they need to understand customer usage, make better marketing decisions and improve customer loyalty.
Industry impact: When a global telecommunications company needed to prevent customer churn, it implemented ThoughtSpot to analyze phone usage as well as customer and market data to find a solution. The data dive and some strategy changes spurred a 175% ROI increase in the first year.
knotch
Location: NYC
How it’s using big data in marketing: The Knotch platform has two data-based components, Measurement and Knowledge, that are designed to help brands optimize digital content strategy by measuring analytics, user feedback and audience data while tracking competitor content for the purposes of comparison and website performance assessment.
Industry impact: Knotch works with companies and leading brands like GE, Ford, Ameritrade and Sprint to enhance digital content efforts.
disqo
Location: Los Angeles
How it’s using big data in marketing: Serving market research agencies, brands and analytics companies, Disqo provides high quality consumer data based on data points from more than 10 million surveys so clients can map and understand their customers’ digital journeys.
Industry impact: On the heels of a $13.5 million Series A funding round in August, Disqo plans to use the new funds to enhance its clients’ understanding of the “how and why” behind customer thinking, behavior and preferences.
catalina marketing
Location: St. Petersburg, Fla.
How it’s using big data in marketing: Catalina Marketing combines an enormous database of shopper purchase history and a personalized advertising experience to ensure that retailers, CPG brands and agencies market to their audiences as effectively as possible. Catalina helps companies leverage data from millions of shoppers to drive personal messages based on current, past and future buying habits, resulting in more repeat trips from shoppers.
Industry impact: According to a Catalina case study, a popular shelf-stable product brand was looking to retain customers as a new competitive product was launched. Catalina searched and analyzed purchasing behavior of millions of U.S. shoppers, identifying behaviors that made consumers more likely to try the new product. After creating a segmented campaign, the brand noted that 41% of shoppers touched by the campaign were less likely to switch products.
beckon inc.
Location: San Mateo, Calif.
How it’s using big data in marketing: Beckon provides marketing analytics software to help companies and brands optimize campaigns, analyze marketing and media performance, manage marketing data and more. Serving industries like consumer electronics, finance, retail, media and travel, Beckon’s solutions ensure that the data and efforts of marketing analysts and teams are visible across channels.
Industry impact: According to a Beckon case study, food giant Campbell’s wanted its marketing efforts to be data-driven. After implementing Beckon, the company was able to “look at data more often and have more effective conversations.”
gravy analytics
Location: Dulles, Va.
How it’s using big data in marketing: Gravy Analytics uses location intelligence to give marketers more insight into where consumers go and what their interests are. Its product, Gravy Audiences, provides companies with access to more than 250 million U.S. mobile users and helps brands in industries like hospitality, retail, finance and restaurants learn more about what current and potential customers want.
Industry impact: Personal care company L’Oreal used Gravy Analytics to successfully target women who attended local fashion and beauty events around New York City. As a result, the company was able to create awareness about its L’Oreal Beauty Days and other local store promotions.
havi
Location: Downers Grove, Ill.
How it’s using big data in marketing: HAVI uses data to create supply chain solutions for the restaurant industry. With expertise in marketing ROI, customer and predictive analytics, HAVI helps its clients clean dissimilar and untidy data to create a single data source for use across the entire restaurant enterprise.
Industry impact: A leading quick-service restaurant used HAVI to plan a new promotion, which required them to create a warehouse as well as a logistical process to minimize costs and still deliver volume.
infusemedia
Location: Newton, Mass.
How it’s using big data in marketing: INFUSEmedia creates demand generation solutions that include brand amplification, intent-driven marketing, content marketing and lead-flow dashboards. The proprietary platform pulls from a worldwide database of 54 million professionals across 24 verticals (including technology, media, real estate, healthcare and consumer goods) to help B2B companies target audiences and drive interest.
Industry impact: INFUSEmedia has worked with prominent clients like Google, IBM, hp and Microsoft. According to Curvature’s demand generation manager, “Their advanced content marketing engine and industry leading solutions proved so beneficial that we’ve already launched our second campaign.”
infutor data solutions
Location: Oakbrook, Ill.
How it’s using big data in marketing: Infutor Data Solutions provides consumer identity management solutions to enhance customer engagement and help companies better understand customers. Infutor’s ID Max solution uses an Identity Graph to create an up-to-date customer identity profile from inbound customer data. ID Max lets marketers create personalized campaigns, increase lead attribution and maintain more touch points.
Industry impact: Infutor’s Identity Graph has many uses. For example, graduate and PhD students at Stanford University conducted a study to understand the effects of rent control in San Francisco. Using Infutor’s Identity Graph, researchers determined how many residents lived in rent-controlled units, how long they stayed there and how much money they saved — all factors that contributed to greater insight about the migration choices of San Francisco residents. Outside the educational research realm, access to such data is extremely valuable to marketers that want to know more about the behaviors and choices of their audiences.
salesify
Location: San Francisco
How it’s using big data in marketing: Salesify’s culled data, which comes from more than 20 sources (including social networks, public sites and discussion boards) and 300 million data points, helps marketing teams enhance campaigns and services.
Industry impact: Salesify works with prominent software and technology companies like Microsoft, IBM and ORACLE to provide relevant big data for marketing efforts.
simon data
Location: NYC
How it’s using big data in marketing: Simon Data’s performance marketing platform runs on data from a variety of marketer-preferred silos, including email, customer support, surveys and product catalogs. The platform integrates with first- and third-party data providers so marketing teams have a complete and unified view of customers in order to provide insights and meet needs.
Industry impact: Simon Data recently closed a $20 million Series B funding round, enabling them to expand data solutions for current clients (AirBnB, Rover, OpenTable) and future customers.
wiland inc.
Location: Niwot, Colo.
How it’s using big data in marketing: Wiland blends data, business intelligence and marketing solutions to help companies grow audiences across channels. Working with clients in numerous industries, Wiland uses proprietary consumer transaction data and predictive analytics to produce highly responsive audiences.
Industry impact: Wiland has access to billions of data points via 3,700 partner organizations that provide transactional data, which in turn helps Wiland’s clients measure performance against similar organizations.
Images via Shutterstock, social media and screenshots of company web pages.
