Announcement came during Yahoo!'s "Big Data, Big Solutions" session at Internet Week, keynoted by Billy Beane of "Moneyball" fame, followed by industry panel discussion featuring speakers from Digitas, Neo@Ogilvy, Citibank, Axciom and others
Big data—and how to analyze and leverage it—was a recurring theme running through Yahoo!'s "Big Data, Big Solutions" session this morning on the opening day of Internet Week New York.
The session kicked off with an inspiring keynote from Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's and hero of the film "Moneyball." Beane shared how his innovative analysis of player data helped him reshape his team to compete more effectively against much richer clubs, and how baseball, like marketing, is a game won or lost by the ability to read data.
Following Beane, Yahoo!'s newly appointed Executive Vice President of the Americas Rich Riley took the stage, where he introduced "Genome from Yahoo," a new custom audience buying solution that leverages big data and insights to help advertisers get the most out of their media investments.
Genome, which will be available as of July 1, comes at a time when marketers are at a crossroads ---the amount of data and technology options available is overwhelming. Which data set is most complete and reliable? If I commit to a technology solution will it really help me get better results? At the same time, media planning and buying techniques are becoming outdated.
Riley noted Genome will help turn "the overwhelming amount of big data confronting marketers into audience data and actionable insights that will help them run successful campaigns. With Genome, we will offer a more holistic approach that provides the content experiences that consumers want, and the audience insights that marketers desire."
Key features of Genome include:
- Best-in-class audience technology featuring OSM, a leading audience technology that manages diverse data sources to help discover optimal audiences at scale, which came from Yahoo!'s acquisition of interclick last December.
- An unmatched data set comprised of three key components: 1) Yahoo!'s vast proprietary search, registration and behavioral data; 2) integrated advertiser information, and; 3) data from more than 25 industry-leading data providers.
- Premium media across a wide range of inventory, including Yahoo!'s guaranteed and non-guaranteed premium inventory, along with supply available from the Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft partnership announced last November, and comScore's Top 1000 publishers.
- Actionable insights based on advanced campaign and user analytics, to help marketers understand consumer needs, anticipate audiences' future performance, and develop the most efficient media buys.
Full details on Genome are available in today's press release, as well as the Genome website.
The session concluded with an industry panel discussion on managing data and complexity in the digital media industry. Moderated by Joanna O'Connell of Forrester Research, the panel included Tim Suther, Chief Marketing Officer of Acxiom, Michele Morelli, SVP Marketing of Citibank, Sean Muzzy, Senior Partner and Managing Director for NEO@Ogilvy, Peter Foster, GM Audience and Performance Advertising for Yahoo! and Michael Lampert, Vice President, Group Director, Media for Digitas.
A key theme that emerged from this discussion was that corporations now realize that data is an enterprise asset, not just a digital marketing asset. The challenge is how to harness all of the vast amount of data available now, narrow in on what's important, and take action on it.
Look for more coverage from Internet Week in the days ahead!
---Louise Rasho
