Using Big Data for Online Advertising Without Wastage: Wishful Dream, Nightmare or Reality?

Big data contains lots of information about consumers and allows companies real-time and data-assisted decision making to gain significant competitive advantages. Digital advertising is an important application for tailoring services to individual needs. Customized advertising is expected to be more effective, cost less, and better received by society. But what looks deceptively simple when it succeeds is frequently quite difficult to implement in practice. It is difficult to judge and validate the quality of automatically generated data. And besides quality, there are other aspects that make it tricky to determine the value of the data. A reasonable price for data depends on the context of its application and the potential cost savings it generates. And not only the price per impression is unclear. The number of contacts is also less obvious than it seems at first glance. Primarily third party data providers often incur problems with the monetization of big data and many are struggling to survive. They depend on the fairness of the data buyer and a successful business model has yet to be developed.