Predictive Analytics and Targeted Response

There are some very exciting, albeit early-stage projects being released this year that will attempt to finally move past the “what-where” and into the “who-when-why-how” in digital advertising.

Since the advent of social media, brands have been able to move closer to their intended audiences by gleaning insights that, at this very moment, are netting Mr. Zuckerberg a not-so-small fortune. Those insights allow marketers to create sales opportunities directly during life’s appropriate moments: candy for Halloween, grills for Father’s Day, etc.

Although we have more data now than ever, the last frontier will be not just analytics but predictive analytics – the ability to see what relevant news will become popular over the next few hours, days, weeks or months. Just think of what this means for a moment; if you’re a college with an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program, and we can predict that a new book on the market is about to go viral, we can piggyback content centered around the new book to lead viewers back to the College’s MFA as a starting point for success. Simply put, whoever owns the content, owns the conversation.

Right now, companies exist that are offering pieces of this analytics puzzle. Blab is a predictive tech platform that uses algorithms to compare chatter across the web and offer recommendations for virality. MindMeld is an app that takes live conversations and matches them with relevant content on the web to see if the live conversation is about a topic that might be trending or is soon-to-be trending.

Viralheat is another app that assists brands target consumers based on significant life events that are happening through social media posts.

Over time, these piecemeal applications will eventually be combined into one super-analytics platform with fantastic predictive powers. Although this prospect may leave some to wonder about privacy issues, the prospect of hypertargeting is actually good for both brands and consumers. A world in which we, as consumers, only get bombarded with ads relevant to us is far better than the anachronistic advertising world in which we live now, where perhaps only 1% of the daily messages actually matter to us personally.

Where people and products come together harmoniously when, why and how we want them – that’s a future I’m willing to predict will come true.

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• Marketing
• Digital