When it comes to the subject of predictive analytics, Mandel says it's actually more scientific than, well, science. In the case of his OMMA DDM panel discussion, Mandel compared predictive analytics to the science of meteorology -- you know, weather forecasting. "Weather forecasters are right half the time -- three quarters of the time," Mandel quipped, adding, "Did you ever hear of a weather person getting fired?" By contrast, Mandel implied, a predictive analyst would get fired if they missed one of their predictions because of the real-world trade-offs, and dollars and cents, involved. I'm not sure if Mandel was …

That's right, SapientNitro Strategy Lead Gabe Weiss says the question -- "Do you sleep with your pet" -- is the magic question for pet product marketers. And no, he wasn't alluding to some kind of deviant behavior, but to the fact that people who love their pets so much that they share a bed with them, also spend "five times more on their pets than if they don't sleep with them." While I'm sure that same magic question applies to some human relationships (though the spending multiple may actually be higher), Weiss says it's a question marketers are trying to …

Do creatives get data? You bet, says Gabe Weiss, Strategy Lead at SapientNitro's New York office. Not only that, but creatives are just as (more?) obsessed with a campaign's performance data as any data specialist, according to Weiss. After a campaign goes live, Weiss says his creatives are the first people at his desk asking about performance, and considering ways to improve it.

The current panelists at OMMA DDM are driving home a point that has already been brought up: data means nothing unless it's relevant. The panel was discussing why our inboxes get filled up with e-mails that have nothing to do with us. Bob Klein, Chief Strategy Officer, Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, said, "The vast majority of the stuff that's out there that's cluttering the inboxes and what we view online is largely irrelevant, even with all this big data." Klein called it "really concerning," and said that big data is "useless without relevancy."

OMMA DDM got off to a start today with one marketing guru (Macy's Julie Bernard) saying Big Data can almost make brand's too relevant to consumers, but is ending up with another (Blue Chip's Bob Klein) saying it's making it too irrelevant. On OMMA DDM's "creative" panel, Klein shared the number of email marketing messages he's received so far today, including one from Curves For Women, P&G, a pedicure offer, and an offer for a social security related discount. "There all this big data, but there's a tremendous amount of irrelevancy out there," Klein said. That's ironic given that Macy's …

The IAB just released its new social research white paper -- #SocialData Demystified -- at OMMA DDM, and if you ask me, it makes things more complicated than it needs to be. The paper breaks social research down into components like Initiation, Consumption, Engagement and Amplification (words, which themselves, can be vague and subject to interpretation), and sub-components within them. Take Amplification, it has sub-components including Frequency, and Density. (Just what we needed, more meaningless terminology and digital marketing speak!). I'd tell you the others, but the IAB's SocialData page won't load for me.

Most marketers are too comfortable acting on proxies, past practices, and "best practices." "That's bullshit," and a recipe for failure, says Simulmedia's Dave Morgan. In today's data-rich ecosystem, success requires that marketers act on the latest insights, according to Morgan. Similarly, big data can mislead marketers and lull them into a false sense of security, Vikram Somaya, General Manager at WeatherFX (a division of The Weather Company) told OMMA DDB attendees on Wednesday. "Data analytics can actually perpetuation this problem," Somaya said regarding the tendency of marketers to rely on established strategies.

One petabyte of data every day is generated from the Internet, according to Joe Mandese, editor in chief of Mediapost, speaking at the OMMA Data-Driven Marketing event in New York -- and that brings up the obvious question: Too much data? "You have to comfortable with discomfort: it's often wrong, it's often dirty, it's often hard to work with," says Vikram Somaya, general manager of WeatherFX for The Weather Company, on a panel discussion about the subject. Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia: "I don't think people know where they are going; they don't what …

On a panel on “right-sizing” data, Vikram Somaya, General Manager, WeatherFX, The Weather Company, says people working with Big Data have to “be comfortable with discomfort.” He explains data is often wrong, often dirty and hard to work with. “You need to be fundamentally comfortable with that and develop easily-executable tests” to optimize campaigns, he said. Fellow panelists Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, and Mark Miller, who leads the CRM practice at Digitas, argued against the idea of information overload as a result of embracing Big Data. “It’s about defining the problem first, and then going to the data,” said …

When asked whether or not we are reaching a point of being overloaded with data at today's OMMA DDM, Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia, says that he doesn't think so. "There are people that are overloaed with data," he said. "But [typically those are] people that don't know what it is they are looking for. [And] in most cases they were doing a terrible job with little data." He makes a good point. If people don't have a clear path with small amounts of data, the additional data could make it seem like there's just too much. It's more about the …