Say Hello to Medium Data

Are you tired of people talking about Big Data, or the counter, Small Data? Well, let me

introduce you to the new concept emerging in 2019: Medium Data. You might be asking

yourself—what in the world is that? And—have I missed something? Let me assure you that

you have not. Medium data is a concept I’d like to introduce as the next wave in data sets used for business insights and targeting.

Big data has been the status quo for many years now, with brands, agencies and providers all

trying to collect as much information on as many people, devices, browsers, email addresses,

phone numbers, etc., as possible, and then trying to stitch it all together with a common key.

To me, it always seemed a bit backwards—trying to join attributes together to develop a

consumer profile. The counter to big data is small data, where you start with a known identity

of a single consumer and try to hang attributes off of that identity to build it up. The natural

challenge to small data is scaling it up to be useful for targeting.

Enter the concept of Medium Data. With the world of data changing by the minute, including

the likes of GDPR and California Privacy Laws coming into the fold, it is critical that data

providers and data aggregators ensure that they have direct rights to data that they are using

with their customers (e.g. brands, agencies, etc.). As for these customers, the more that they

too can use first-party direct-source data, the better. This brings us back to the Medium Data

concept. Medium Data is the new volume of data that clients will be forced to use in targeting

consumers. Think of it like a panel of directly sourced consumer data that is representative of

the larger consumer population. Kind of funny, but we are going back to the days of panel data, only refined for the digital age.

Medium Data is, then, the directly sourced data that serves as a panel for your target consumer audience. And we are officially back to the future.