Using data analytics can benefit the social services sector

HALF the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half, goes the famous marketing adage, coined more than a century ago by John Wanamaker, an American department store tycoon. Today, businesses are using big data analytics to get better bang-for-buck from their marketing budgets. In a future where our tax dollars will be increasingly stretched, it is time to use the same data tools in the social sector.

Have you ever searched for a product, and then seen ads for that same product appear on your Facebook feed shortly thereafter? This happens because Facebook is using data analytics to help advertisers target consumers most likely to be receptive to their product. It is a win-win for both advertisers and consumers. Advertisers reduce waste from marketing to people who would never buy their product.

At the same time, consumers see fewer irrelevant ads. To enable this targeting, Facebook creates a comprehensive data profile of each of its members, and uses this profile to predict how likely each person is to be interested in different products. Facebook then shows each person only the products they are likely to be interested in.