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Last week ExchangeWire ran their 2nd industry event, The Data Economy at the Young Vic Theatre in London.

The focus of the day was to shed some much needed light on how we drive towards a data economy, and we all listened keenly for guidance on how best to untangle the value data holds.

Here are some highlights:

- Steven Filler of Collective emphasising the importance of a campaign’s creative, explaining that cleverly targeted creative should also be engaging.

- The panel’s Big Data discussion, debating the challenges holding back growth in the data industry; a lack of trained data analysts and the current need to buy media and data separately certainly resonated with the audience. Our UK office has recently experienced difficulties recruiting a suitable media analyst, while from week to week I see both our buy and sell side media conversations increasingly prioritising data.

- Nick Stringer from the IAB who put the frighteners up the audience by warning that Baroness Vivien Reading was coming for us! This was a great attempt to bring us all up to speed ahead of May’s Privacy EU Framework, but this message needs to be reaching the ears of agencies and customers just us much as media and technology companies. Unfortunately only 10% of the audience was from agencies – and Marco Bertozzi of Vivaki later commented in his blog, “it is a state of the nation that there were no clients.”

So, perhaps the biggest challenge we continue to face is one of education, and having enough industry players interested in data in the first place.

To see how Microsoft is making sense of the world of data, check out the latest on our offline/online targeting capabilities and this video on the future of targeting.

More from me soon!

Zuzanna Gierlinska - EMEA Director for the Microsoft Media Network

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