Data Geek Shortage; Data Sharing -Surprise, It's An Offline Challenge, Too

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No Talent

The WSJ’s Ben Rooney reports on the emergence of companies looking to corral ‘big data’ and how there’s a shortage of big data worker bees let alone scientists. Admirably, Rooney provides his definition of ‘big data’ in the piece: “Big Data refers to the idea that an enterprise can mine all the data it collects right across its operations to unlock golden nuggets of business intelligence. And whereas companies in the past have had to rely on sampling, Big Data, or so the promise goes, means you can use your entire corpus of digitized corporate knowledge. It is, by all accounts, the next big thing.” Read more – including a definition for ‘data scientist’ (subscription).

Data Sharing -Offline

Data sharing by big brand, offline publishers is under review in an article from The NY Times’ Natasha Singer: “I subscribed to a half-dozen print magazines last year, signing up for each with a different typo in my name or variation in my address. Then I collected the direct mail that resulted, tracking the solicitations back to the publishers who had shared my erroneous contact information.” Read about the results.

P&G Performance

Ad Age’s Jack Neff covers P&G’s fiscal Q3 2012 financial report and says that the company is rolling back prices as competitive pressures from companies such as Unilever appear to be having an effect. Though the company slightly beat Wall Street expectations, the company revised future earnings predictions. Read Ad Age. The company says marketing spend will not be slashed and that’s a good thing because analysts “torched” the P&G CEO Bob McDonald on the earnings call for the less-than-stellar performance. For instance, Deutsche Banc analyst William Schmitts asked P&G execs rhetorically, “…has there been a time in the company’s recent history where the advertising ratio has increased and market shares have fallen?” Read the earnings call transcript on Seeking Alpha. Comparison-for-the-heckuvit: P&G had $20 billion in quarterly revenue and $2.5 billion in net earnings versus Google which drove a little over $8 billion in quarterly revenue (ex-TAC) with $2.89 billion in earnings. Discuss.

Demos And Such

The Nielsen Wire blog offers up some U.S. Media trends from its recent comprehensive study. Did you know?: “Online adults aged 25-54 are 23 percent more likely than the average U.S. Internet user to follow a brand via social networking and 29 percent more likely to purchase a product online that was featured on TV.” There would appear to be potential for a rich, retargeting data point here, too. Read the blog. And, download Nielsen’s ‘State of Media’ reports: Part I (PDF), Part II (PDF). It’s primarily TV data but online lovers should find a few nuggets – and there are graphs that might make eMarketer jealous.

Context Matters!

In Australia, Google’s local efforts are being described by competitors such as ninemsn as a Star Wars-inspired “Death Star” strategy. Australian Financial Review’s Paul McIntyre covers the story, “One of [ninemsn CEO Mark] Britt’s biggest gripes with Google is that its low-cost advertising model has blinded major advertisers and media buyers. ‘We have 40 years of experience in marketing that says where an ad appears changes the way people feel about and use a brand.'” Context matters. And with the data available today, you can prove it, or perhaps not. Depends. Read more.

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Advising Companies

On Digiday, Jack Marshall looks at the inclusion of agency executives on advisory boards and/or boards of directors to see if there’s any potential conflict of interest with their duties to the client. Marshall quotes Draftfcb SVP Patrick Moorhead, who is apparently on a few advisory boards for ad-related companies himself: “It raises questions. Did a company raise business on the merits of their solution, or a back-room deal? I’m not thrilled by the idea of this going on, but I imagine it does.” Read more.

Tech Bubble

Yesterday, an NY Times’ article by Nick Bilton had the Twitter-verse in a frenzy as he claimed that there may be shenanigans, of sorts, going on with technology investment – and that a tech bubble is upon us. Read it. Angel investor and (now Ebay-owned) Hunch founder Chris Dixon decides to chime in on his personal blog. He offers a “nuanced” formula for understanding if there’s a tech bubble or not including: “No good venture investors invest in companies with the primary strategy being to flip them. This isn’t because they are altruistic – it is because it is a bad strategy. You are much better off investing in companies that have a good chance to build a big business.” Read more.

Display Is Dead (Again)

HuffPo co-founder and Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti says display is dead. People have been saying that since online display started -but Peretti is determined and tells paidContent’s Jeff John Roberts, “‘People are trying to get back to the way it was. With traditional display, people have figured out clever ways to get more clicks out of ads that don’t perform well.’ Peretti sees display ads as artifacts of an earlier internet era when people went to portals to find content. That era — and its skyscraper and banner ads — has long passed as readers instead turned to search and, more recently, to social networks to find stories.” Sure, there’s a bit of self-interest with Peretti’s view, but read his argument on the future.

Now Hiring: Growth Hacker

On his personal blog, Andrew Chen argues that the an emerging role in Silicon Valley called the “growth hacker.” He begins, “The new job title of ‘Growth Hacker’ is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of ‘How do I get customers for my product?’ and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph.” Read it.

Venture In The Corp

Ever wonder how those Corporate VCs (CVCs) run their investments? Aol Ventures maven Mike Brown explores structural best practices on his personal blog. Brown says to the budding CVC, “Your parent company can be your best friend or worst nightmare and again largely it comes down to trust and control. Operating an autonomous investment committee seems most appropriate provided the parent understands exactly what it is the investment team is doing structurally.” Read it.

You’re Hired!