The term big data is something that all professionals working in the digital world have to get used to, because even though it may seem like a trend, it is something that seems to be here to stay. I myself was not aware of the impact it could have on our online advertising business until an article by Sir Martin Sorrell opened my eyes: “Creativity in the age of the Maths Men” (I recommend googling it and reading it).

In that text, Sorrell’s point was simply logical (but perhaps not obvious to everyone): how the growing importance of big data and technology was impacting business, and how it was revolutionizing what agencies could do for their clients. That’s why I said that the future of advertising and marketing services is in the marketing belonged to both the Mad Men and the Maths Men: the mathematicians, the men of analysis and data were, are, as important for business development as the creative, the men of ideas.

These words of his, according to Sir Martin, were misinterpreted by some who understood that “creativity” was relegated to the minor leagues. But the only thing he meant – the article develops – is that, although creativity will continue to be the heart that pumps the business, the ideas, ideas, ideas, ideas and ideas will continue to be the heart of the business. insights sold by advertising are the product of knowledge, those “pearls” that give value to customers, they can come from designers, planners, art directors or strategic consultants, of all of them, and comments on how dangerous it would be to think that the “alchemists” of ideas are only a select few: creativity is not exclusive to one discipline or another; creativity is not exclusive to one discipline or another. imagination, inventiveness, ingenuity and talent are everywhere, whether it’s in the media, public relations, software development, data analysis or research.

The moral of this article is perhaps that ideas will never again come out on their own without data on their effectiveness, their influence, their return on investment or their impact on the different media that will be useful for clients, just as nobody can conceive of carrying out a digital project without activating their analytics to collect all the traffic data it receives, which in its immense mass can perhaps tell us such important things about the business that it could condition the strategies to direct them.

The datification of the world is a fact, we live in an increasingly digitized environment where everything is measured and collected automatically, and where the analysis of this data to find patterns that give us clues about what is happening in that world is increasingly valued. And advertising, which is part of it, will also be no stranger to the influence of big data on strategies, campaigns, approaches, research and, why not, even ideas.

For all these reasons, a servant who considers himself an advertiser by profession although he is a computer engineer by training, and who considers that innovation is one of the fundamental pillars for the future of the digital agency business, and who has only failed one subject in his life, statistics, and at the same time feels an immense interest and attraction towards the theory of massive data analysis and has decided to read everything he can get his hands on on the subject. I may be wrong and big data, in the end, has nothing to do with the future of online advertising. But just in case.

Daniel Megías