The man, the marketer, and the machine

In a world where consumers can change brand preferences with a click of their mouse, the role of marketing has evolved from the traditional qualitative approach to an era of intelligent, data-driven marketing. As real-time consumer data has become the most valuable asset to a marketer, Machine Learning (ML) has stolen the limelight and become a vital solution that addresses serious questions in the minds of marketers today – how do we have the right conversation, with the right consumer, and at the most ideal time. This is the holy grail of modern marketing, and data is the answer.

What are we going to do with all that data?

Northeastern University predicts that our world produces 2.5 exabytes of data daily and there will be 44 zettabytes of data in the world by 2020. With all the data in the world as our oyster, marketers, just like every other line of business, are taking advantage of this growing opportunity.

At Cloudera, we recently saw a job search engine aggregate data insights for over 70 million registered users around the world and increase its search engine marketing (SEM) capabilities to quickly perform advanced analytics on more than 20 million job postings monthly, using ML. Helping people find meaningful jobs is just the beginning, as big data and ML are changing the way business and marketing decisions are made, for good, and consumers are benefiting.

Machines for humans, by humans

Amidst the use of data and machines to better reach consumers, many question the role of today’s marketer. However, this is the first time in human history that marketing and technology teams are speaking the same language. With modern software, ML has become intuitive and accessible to everyone, from data scientists to everyday business users. Previously, the last to be the...