The most potential for big data in relation to media companies comes from the ability to begin to balance big data with other data and research. Legacy media companies have have been using survey data to better understand consumer behaviors over the course of a significant length of time - generations- whereas new media companies such as netflix use big data collected over a relatively short amount of time to effectively meet consumer demands. Both strategies have proved effective individually, but can benefit from integration. As companies begin to better understand consumer behavior through big data - such as the relationship between content and preferred viewing medium - and place it into the existing structure of long term behavior and trends, there is a potential for smarter data use. As was stated by Richard Marks in Big Data, Big Opportunity :
“To simply assume that Big Data will replace survey based data is to do a disservice to Big Data and actually limit its potential. Bringing together Big Data and survey data really is a case of 1+1 = 3. Big Data is enhanced and becomes even smarter, more three-dimensional. Big Data is able to reach the parts that survey data alone cannot. Industry survey data is uniquely able to provide the big picture, the context of the market as a whole, with data that is transparent and widely available.”
Media brands are constantly fighting to compete for market share and audience loyalty by offering content through new mediums and products. Traditional news media is challenged by the instantaneous nature of online and social media reporting, but it doesn’t mean that a printed newspaper is an obsolete product - or that people only get information in either one form or another. It seems that establishing the correct infrastructure for collecting and analyzing information (both big data and traditional research methods) about the individual will provide a more complete view of the diverse nature of media consumption. Taking a more universal approach to combining digital and and traditional methods of audience research provides a more accurate understanding of one individual’s behaviors within the whole rather than the behavior of the ‘whole’ of the collected dataset. Companies that operate in digital media platforms exclusively, Netflix, can make accurate conclusions about their users from big data because all media consumption is documented, whereas companies that produce content across many forms of traditional and digital media, however, will not be able to make as accurate of conclusions about their full audience by relying solely on big data.
“We believe that the future is not either/or but rather that industry currencies, providing competitive context and in-house data sets, will coexist with and complement Big Data. Without that wider context, media brands will be left with a myopic view of the market. ... However data in isolation, trying to use data sets without an understanding of how they slot into the universe as a whole, could suck us into a research black hole; masters of the minutiae of our own domains but blind to the outside world.” - Richard Marks
