In response to the proliferating influence of big data on reshaping the marketing industry in the 21st century, Dr. Geoffrey Moore – a world-renowned organizational theorist and management consultant – once famously proclaimed that “without big data, you are blind and deaf in the middle of the freeway.” Thus far, this striking forecast has indeed proven to be accurate as big data has been widely adopted in virtually every industry, ranging from healthcare to manufacturing.

From Jeremy Waite via Linkedin

However, despite all the anticipation surrounding the potential wide-ranging benefits of big data in an era which possesses the necessary computing technology to collect and process information on a scale never seen before , it does not appear that everyone is on board with the idea of their personal data being tracked by third-parties.

The recent controversy surrounding WhatsApp’s decision to finally allow its parent company, Facebook, to access its user data for ad-targeting purposes has reinvigorated a long-standing debate on whether the widespread mining of big data in today’s marketing ecosystem should be allowed to encroach on user’s personal privacy. If you’ve ever paid attention to the ads on search engines such as Google and Facebook, then you might have already noticed how they all eerily seem to have been placed there specifically for you. These “custom ads” are the result of information giants (Facebook, Google, etc) tracking and analyzing your searches so that they can generate ads that will more likely cause you to convert a final purchase .

From Dado Ruvic/Reuters via Telegraph.co

Therefore, it is very easy to understand exactly why there has been so much backlash over WhatsApp’s reversal of a once core company value to protect user privacy. By gaining access to WhatsApp’s one billion active users’ phone numbers, address books, operating systems, carriers codes, and device identities, Facebook will now allow its advertising partners potentially another channel to target consumers.

While from a ethical perspective there are many criticisms to be made for the fact big data has caused our privacy to be compromised, from an economical perspective, however, the emergence of big data has been nothing short of a boon. For this reason, I believe that despite the opposition, the adoption of big data will only continue to surge because the myriad of monetary incentives involved is simply too great for the industry to resist. According to BARC’s 2015 report, firms that utilized big data reported an average increase of 8% in revenues and decrease of 10% in costs.

No matter how unscrupulous it may seem for our personal data to be tracked for the purpose of ad-targeting, this is likely a new norm in an era where big data is considered a marketing essential.

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