I wrote recently about the new era of display marketing, and how real time bidding and other advances are bringing the precision and performance of search advertising to display. Well…a new era of unstructured data is also upon us.

A widely cited 2011 IDC study found that the amount of data in the world is now doubling every 2 years. This trend is especially apparent in marketing, as massive amounts of data are being created by ever-increasing numbers of search queries, SKU views, social signals, page visits, and more.

Unstructured Data Volumes Exploding

Traditional paradigms for managing data are struggling under this tsunami. In addition to the sheer volume of data, the fact that so much of it is “unstructured” creates special challenges.

AdExchanger.com recently quoted John Iwata of IBM as stating that 80% this data is “unstructured”. This means that it doesn’t come pre-packaged in neat segments, fitted into a cascading taxonomy of some sort.

Instead, the data is hugely varied and constantly evolving. As an example consider search, where new terms and groups of terms are continually being formed as new artists, politicians, products, companies, and other evolutions take place.

To read more visit >>> Search Engine Land