Business Intelligence Solution for an Advertising Company

Eric Schmidt, of Google, says my cell phone should be free, its cost subsidized by advertising.  Bad idea. Advertising is intrusive enough.We need less, not more.  In the age of Business Intelligence, intrusive advertising is no longer intelligent business.....

Half of every publication I buy is taken up with advertising.  Just trying to find the table of contents is an effort for which I could profitably employ Google.  In some magazines, there are twenty pages of advertising right up front, and the table of contents is spread over two half pages, which are shared with (and not easily distinguishable from) still more advertising.  Once I have found the table of contents, and know the page number of the cover story that caught my attention in the first place, finding that page number becomes yet another arduous search effort, because at least half the pages are not numbered at all.  And if there is a “special advertising supplement”, cleverly disguised as an article, with twenty or so pages inserted between pages 50 (which is numbered) and 51 (which is not), I give up the search.

 Now what can be done..Recently Google announced its long-awaited TV AD trial with Echostar and Astound in what has become a long line of offline advertising forays. What's Google up to? Creating a dashboard for advertising services.

In other words, Google is trying to do what business intelligence companies do today for enterprise customers–create a dashboard so executives can monitor returns, an ad campaign's progress and potential trouble spots in real time. In enterprise applications, business intelligence is often the most valuable player to a company. Business intelligence software is widely taken for granted today.

But the business intelligence (BI) state of affairs in most forms of advertising is a different story entirely. BI is non-existent. It’s no secret that so-called business intelligence software has been a strong market lately, and why is no surprise. Companies are eager for any tools to help them navigate — and find a competitive advantage — in an ever-rising flood of digital information in customer databases, employee e-mails and reports, Web pages, blogs, RFID data and so on.

Coming to advertising,  Information on advertising effectiveness is valuable in negotiating rates for broadcast, online and print media. This is an analysis that identifies the most cost-effective investments in creative concepts and in media options for marketing departments. It uses data from selected markets that have been subject to different types of advertising strategy, and by comparing and contrasting performance, recommends optimal investment patterns. The return on investment is then monitored and clients modify their advertising spend accordingly...

BI systems have many degrees of freedom. There is more room for creativity and ingenuity in design than in other system development. It is exactly for this reason that the right BI approach adds measurable value to your company's success....