Monday, October 21, 2013

The Top Way to Find a Job Today: Follow the Data

Big Data Provides Big Opportunity for Today's Grads


Mark Ailsworth from +MaxPoint Interactive spoke on Big Data and the trends in marketing analytics and what it means for today's graduates in terms of employment possibilities last Friday at the +Aurora University first-ever AMA Collegiate Event last Friday, October 18th.  Thanks to all who organized the event for a great day for our students and those of the  13 other regional Universities that attended.  Ailsworth's keynote started the day.

big data, analhytics
Mark Ailsworth of Max Point speaking on Big Data at Aurora University

What is Big Data?

Ailsworth said that technically Big Data is large, structured and unstructured data sets that can only be processed using unconventional methods of analysis and cloud computing.  However,  we have only figured out about 1 percent of what we can do with data in terms of improving marketing programs.  Companies like MaxPoint, who have technologies that combines various aspect of customer and industry data can help target customers interested in buying a particular product. Big data has created a number of jobs for today's students, from database design to marketing and sales.

For example, +Pillsbury, a General Mills company, uses, over 3,000 social media sites to interact with its customers to creates new ideas for product development.  Blending caramel and bacon flavors, for example, came from the analysis of social interactions.  Kimberly Clark's +Huggies brand uses customer data to interact with its customers in real time on the web site, delivering messages that are relevant to the particular consumer.  +Ford Motors is a company that also looks at what the user has done and what stage of the buying process they are in to serve up relevant content.  

The Spending Gap

The opportunity for future marketers lies in the fact that there is a gap between current ad spend and where consumers spend their time. For example, 12% of users' time is spent on mobile, which is only 4% of ad spend.  Creating interactions on the new media where consumers are spending their time is a tremendous opportunity for those entering the field of Marketing.  The Digital Marketing Minor at +Aurora University , which will launch next fall and our current Interactive Marketing concentration, provides courses that discuss building the customer database, analytics and other skills necessary to get entry level jobs in this area,


By Debra Zahay-Blatz.
You can find Debra on  and Twitter as well as LinkedIn.

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