When the defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers signed a deal with Goodyear last week to have the company's Wingfoot logo on Cavs' jerseys beginning next season, it raised a lot of eyebrows and upped the ante on advertising in pro sports.

For anyone tuning in to an NBA game during the playoffs this year, the endless stream of three-point attempts being launched is ample evidence of how the use of analytics has revolutionized the game over the last few years. Less obvious, but just as impactful, is the role big data has had in behind the scenes efforts of sports franchises. Filling millions of empty seats takes a huge amount of audience data, as well as a deeper understanding of consumer mindset, and sports teams are extremely aggressive in adapting new technologies in an effort to both better understand and more …

One hundred audience-facing jobs weren't the only things lost, with the recent bloodletting at "The Worldwide Leader." We've heard for years in other verticals, that marketing to "the segment of one" is a fast approaching reality.

This Memorial Day weekend, if your eyes can keep up, you'll see more logos flying across your television screen than, perhaps, during any other weekend on the calendar. That's because all told among the Indianapolis 500, NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600 and the Monaco F1 Grand Prix - 95 or so racers with their vehicles covered in logos - will log more than 43,000 miles in high-octane competitive motorsports action.