• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 11, 2013

Big data just means there's a lot of it -- but it should be about connected data, meaningful data. It's about parsing the meaningful nuggets of information to drive the business forward, said Joy Billings, director of analytics and optimization, Experian Consumer Direct, speaking at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit.

Billings, joined by 3M Search Senior Manager Craig Berdie, Quantcast Head of Search Agency Development Scott Linzer, Teradata Digital Marketing Solutions Manager Michael Lummus, and 3Q Digital CEO David Rodnitzky, analyzed the science and art of search engine marketing.

Gord Hotchkiss, who led the discussion, said using big data can help marketers find the correlation and answer the "what" questions, but not the "why" the  causal foundations that drive behavior. So how do marketers get better at answering why?

The strategy must come from an integrated platform, according to Lummus. Mangers need to give marketers the room to prove results. Many times two divisions within a company will come to the table with the same data but get different answers. People try to do too much too soon with data. Nine out of ten times companies don't integrate offline calls or CRM data, Rodnitzky added.

Organizational separation that also leads to data silos can stifle a company's growth. Getting employees talking and sharing information may take reorganization and a chief data officer, the panel agreed. Data and deep analysis can let marketers  map out a three- to five-year plan.

Data as a service will emerge in the advertising industry because companies continue to struggle on how to mine and use it. Steve Jones, director of strategy for big data and analytics at analyst firm Capgemini, urged industries to start thinking about data-orientated services. The advertising industry supports third-party data services, but he was talking about the type of data services that originate from supply chain, manufacturing and information technology. He said this trend will become more prevalent as the industry moves deeper into automation.

Jones writes about machine-to-machine (M2M) data services, but not for the advertising industry, though a similar business model would work and is needed.