Why SKY, ITV and ADT are unlocking the power of data

Government backs use of data science with launch of £42million institute opened by Minster of Universities and Science, Jo Johnson (Boris’ brother) and Martha Lane Fox.

Top marketers recognise data is one of most important things to drive twenty first century economy.

Big brands are unlocking the power of data science to help inform their advertising strategies to get ahead of the crowd.

Using unique social intelligence tools developed by leading scientists, they can analyse millions of tweets by hundreds of thousands of people in real time.

The cutting edge technology used to consume and analyse vast quantities of data was recognised recently at the launch of the Alan Turing Institute (on Wednesday 11 November).

The £42million government-funded institute was opened by Minster of Universities and Science, Jo Johnson and Martha Lane Fox and showcased the vision for the newly created Institute.

Data Visualisations of UK cities were presented at the event to show how the way people come together to form communities differs across the UK.

Leeds business, Bloom Agency created the visualisations by analysing 23 million tweets from 300,000 individuals over one month.

Bloom Agency’s Chief Data Scientist, Peter Laflin developed the Whisper tool which created the data visualisations.

He said: “Our work with the Universities of Oxford and Strathclyde using social media data maps out the complex structures that exist in cities, and doing this in real time, is a great example of a new data source being used to tackle previously intractable problems.

“This work is intended to help city leaders to understand the impact of the decisions they make about how cities should be run and which policies should receive civic support.

“This is one step on the road to creating a ‘smart city’, where we use data to help us live more sustainably, efficiently and in harmony with others.

“This means problems of everyday life could be solved such as how to best get to work, where to park, even which street lights need replacement bulbs.

It’s the exactly the same technology we use with our clients, to help them understand how their target audiences behave so we can tailor specific content for them.

We used Whisper to help mine the information that informed the making of the recent Thierry Henry Sky advert which the Mirror called ‘the greatest thing in the history of the universe”.

What is clear is that data is one of the most important things that will drive our twenty first century economy, our academic understanding and our progress as a society.

Data is allowing us a view into problems previously too complex to investigate.

And it seems that Marketers at the top of their game already recognise that.’

The newly launched Alan Turing Institute brings together top leaders in advanced mathematics and computing science from across the UK including Bloom’s Peter Laflin.

Peter added: “The institute will play a pivotal role in connecting together industry, academia and the global economy in such a way that the lack of clarity around ‘data science’ is skilfully and cleverly resolved whilst providing the motivation for world class innovation with data science”.