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 …

Critical Mass exec Shaina Boone has some advice for marketers who don't want to think about thorny privacy-related issues. "We all have to suck it up and stop ignoring it," she says.

Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia -- and a forefather of big data's place in the advertising industry -- doesn't think marketers are overloaded with data so long as they're purpose driven. What should that purpose be? That all depends on the marketer, says Mark Miller, Senior Vice President and CRM Practice Lead at Digitas. "It's about first defining the problem, and then going to the data," Miller told OMMA DDB attendees on Wednesday. Bigger picture, "Big data allows you to think about things as they could be."

Shaina Boone of Critical Mass suggests we could see a surge in permission based marketing where consumers are rewarded for sharing more data. She says she already knows of a few startups focused on this model. Hasn’t marketing guru Seth Godin been preaching the benefits of permission-based marketing for years?