The Next Step in Big Data: How to Humanize It

Big data has been defined in many different ways, which can make the term seem confusing. It’s often considered to be a marketing or business term. Despite this confusion, a general definition of big data is: a large collection of data that is analyzed to show trends and patterns in human behavior (such as buying behavior). This data can be a collection of traditional data (like financial history or voter registration status) and digital data (like Web and social networking behavior). Companies typically use big data for marketing purposes, like creating targeted ads — but this is just one usage.

Is there a way to humanize big data?

Unfortunately, a human isn’t analyzing all of the data that a company collects — a computer is. A company is able to track your Web behavior via cookie tracking, and a computer then collects that data and makes sense of it. A person can then analyze the material that the computer gives them, and use it to make a more effective marketing strategy for their company. But that doesn’t make the practice less of an invasion of privacy, especially when most consumers don’t even know that they’re being tracked. Almost every website that you visit will track your behavior — far more than you may realize.

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Humanizing big data, then, might be difficult. In order to humanize it, you may simply need to change your perspective on it. Sure, you can see big data as essentially working to improve your experience with a product or service, as it tracks your online behavior in order to deliver targeted ads. While many might argue that this is an invasion of privacy, you could also choose to embrace its nosiness, by arguing that big data cares what you think. Big data is used to deliver a better experience — wouldn’t you rather see relevant content as opposed to irrelevant content?

Many, too, will make the argument that consumers would prefer online marketing methods — via tracking that produces relevant ads — instead of traditional marketing methods (cold calling), which are seen as more intrusive. Marketers can also use all of this big data to improve their customer relationships, or even to make products that customers really want (even products that customers don’t know they want). When humanizing big data, it essentially comes down to this: how can people (marketers) use big data to “reach” other people (customers)? By getting to know them.