Mobile Advertising News from 140 Proof

In an age where social media applications provide an ideal platform for all demographics to share and discuss interests, and even shop their favourite products, why have marketers not been able to leverage this data for targeting purposes?

The truth of the matter is that all successful digital marketers in 2017 and beyond will exploit data from social platforms to more accurately identify and define interests among audiences. Only through properly identifying and accessing this interest-based data can marketers make accurate connections and deliver successfully targeted in-app campaigns. “This seems like an obvious conclusion”, you may be thinking, but the real challenge exists in ensuring you have accurate and reliable data compiled in a comprehensive and logical way so that you may access the true interests of the engaged consumer regardless of who your target audience is.

The Social Consumer

To ignore consumers’ expressed social interests when crafting the approach to campaign targeting is to be leaving marketing dollars on the table. eMarketer estimated that in 2015 more than half (55.6%) of individual Canadians and a larger majority (69%) of the country’s internet users would engage in social media on a monthly basis. The number of consumers engaging with social media platforms and will only increase to do so as the younger, digitally raised generation matures. (4). This is where consumers go for every form of the old advertising concept of social proof today.

Further, while some marketers and platforms focus on UGC, technology should also consider what content users are consuming, not just what they’re creating. This is because a consumer's social interests will give you visibility into the things they like, where they go, and what they like to do. Following these signals is allowing the consumer to take the lead and show the marketer what they are opting into, so the marketer can then in turn understand whether a product or service will be of any importance to them.

Canadians Love Mobile Applications

Whereas Canadian smartphone ownership sat at 55% in 2014, in just two years it increased to 76% in 2016, with 86% of mobile time being spent using apps, according to comScore. Some other relevant statistics regarding mobile application usage specifically include:

1 in 3 Canadians use mobile shopping apps (1)

3 in 5 Canadian Mobile App Users Have used mobile apps to access / manage their finances (2)

Top app adoption in Canada shows a healthy mixture of gaming applications, music listening, messaging, navigation, and social media (3)

While advertising in-app, the lack of cookies, tracking pixels, and limited capabilities of devices IDs can make targeting a unique challenge. So, given the usage of mobile devices and applications in Canada, marketers must work to actively collect data and use new technology to assist in creating relevant and meaningful connections.

New Times, New Tech, New Possibilities

Technological knowledge today is expanding at an unprecedented rate and the speed of discovery will only continue to increase. This includes the technology associated with collecting and actioning on data.

One of the newest technologies that is tackling data collection and usage differently is 140 Proof. The 140 Proof solution enables marketers to collect interest-based data collected from social sources and use this as part of targeting in mobile applications; they developed their Blended Interest Graph technology specifically for this purpose. Unprecedented in Canada, this technology interprets data from over 600 million public social accounts to create consumer profiles that segment audiences. In this way, we can connect with mobile application users on topics that are actually relevant to them.

The Blended Interest Graph technology takes billions of social cues, including what consumers share, where they check in, who they follow, and which keywords they use to determine their interests. With this information the Blended Interest Graph technology paints a more complete picture of the engaged consumer to build audiences that are nuanced, comprehensive and accurate.

140 Proof Acquired for $20M! #OMG

TL;DR: 140 Proof is being acquired!

In the beginning...

Today we are excited to announce that 140 Proof and its audience modeling technology are being acquired, and will operate as a wholly owned division of Acuity, a public company. The merger brings additional capabilities and reach to the customers of both companies through 140 Proof’s trailblazing interest data APIs and social audience tools.

140 Proof has grown from a few coders in a San Francisco warehouse to serving billions of socially targeted ad impressions with offices in five cities, servicing global brand customers. After raising funds from top Silicon Valley power-players like BlueRun Ventures, Founders Fund, and SV Angel, our team and our vision grew, expanding from exclusively Twitter apps to native apps on virtually every social platform. Throughout its growth trajectory, 140 Proof has always remained loyal to its vision: making mobile-social advertising easy for brand customers.

A Novel Approach: Connections > Content

While most of the social ad industry desperately chased “social influencers” and scrambled to “analyze sentiment,” 140 Proof took a uniquely powerful approach: our Relevance Engine API analyzed the interest graph, a public network of social connections between fans and the things they follow. By focusing on the power of the interest graph rather than highly commoditized content analysis, 140 Proof customers enjoy an advantage in building audiences at scale and understanding consumer preference through custom visual analytics.

We’re Just Getting Started

140 Proof's brand advertising platform and audience creation tools will continue to operate, simply with larger scope: campaigns will gain the advantage of international reach, while partnerships and customer relationships will persist with continuity. 100% of 140 Proof's technology and team are being retained by the new business — 140 Proof’s founders will continue to run 140 Proof, and its team will manage interest graph operations, social / mobile targeting, and interest modeling. Additional optional benefits like real-time bidding, cross-platform control, and self-serve reporting will accrue to new and existing customers alike. By joining together 140 Proof’s social data product and audience visualization tools with a programmatic platform, 140 Proof and Acuity together create a hybrid social / programmatic powerhouse.

A Special Thanks

…to all our customers. Thank you for your support over the years, from our early days to our present state. This business owes its success to you. We look forward to helping you on your next campaign.

— 140 Proof

Jon Elvekrog, CEO + John Manoogian III / jm3, CTO

“There’s a part of me that thinks perhaps we go on existing in a place even after we’ve left it.” ― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

The grim reaper may be losing his grip on the finality of death in the modern age. The ancient Egyptians outfitted their royalty for the trip to eternity with food and jewels and servants and pets, but all they needed was Facebook.  

Every status update, every like, every comment creates a digital trail that documents our lives, our feelings, our aspirations pinned to moments in time.  For younger generations this frequently begins at birth, if not on their own accounts.  My news feed includes a parade of pictures of kids growing up, playing sports, celebrating milestones.  And the feeds of some of my contemporaries include the loss of their parents and, in some sad cases, their own final goodbyes.  

But they are gone from earth, not from social. One friend of mine passed more than three years ago, but his data lives on and I frequently see him on the list of people who are better than me at Scrabble.

And so it occurs to me that we are only scratching the surface when we note that people often curate their social feeds to show themselves as they would like to be perceived. Consciously or not, we are also curating how we would like to be preserved.  We are daily contributing small pieces to our own obituaries, nuggets of first person expression that our descendents can use to know us. There will come a day when my son is the age I was in 2007 when I first joined Facebook, and from that day forward my social feed will be his contemporary, he’ll be able to get a sense of who I was, what I cared about — the good, bad the trivial — when I was his age.  It is not possible for me to have that depth of insight into my father when he was my age.  

As I’ve become more aware of the long-term impact of my digital actions, I wonder if I can become more thoughtful with the content I create and share. Perhaps I’ll proactively curate content to show my son how proud I am of him, or find ways to show him my dimensions beyond Dad.  He will see what I cared about in terms of music (I hope those YouTube links never break), politics, art. He’ll understand what I think is funny. He will no doubt see me grapple with loss, pivot in career, and grow in ways I can’t now anticipate.  I always think about what people at work might think of my posts; now I may think about my adult son’s impressions. I hope that this realization will lead me to be more honest rather than more cautious, because the stakes now seem higher.

I’m clearly not the only one thinking about my social life after death.  Facebook, Google, Twitter and other digital services have begun offering post mortem policies to manage our digital lives after death. For Facebook, that means leaving your “life” in the hands of a legacy contact, while Eterni.me takes it a massive leap into the creepy by using Artificial Intelligence algorithms to mimic your personality via a virtual avatar, enabling you to communicate with friends and family long after you’re gone.

No matter how we advance, our time will eventually come to an end. But as long as our Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest accounts live on so too do our interests, opinions, and memories. Each social media interaction captures a piece of who we are, forming time capsules that will eventually offer enormous, accessible insight to descendants and future anthropologists. For the living, this is a reminder that social content shouldn’t be thought of as fleeting, it has a lasting presence and what we post, pin, like or share becomes part of our legacy.

-Matt Rosenberg, VP Marketing

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How many apps do you have on your smartphone? How many do you actually use everyday? Chances are, it’s not many. As of 2014 the average user only had about 25 apps on their phone and only regularly used about seven. And with over 1.2 million iOS apps available, to say supply is outpacing demand is a bit of an understatement.

For consumers, sifting through the App Store for the perfect app is like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack. While the search bar can be a big help if you know what you’re looking for, organic discovery is nearly impossible due to too many choices and little organization. Partnerships such as Apple/Pinterest deal have recently cropped up to cut through App Store chaos and address discovery challenges. While this is certainly a step in the right direction for consumers, app discovery still has a long way to go, and it’s top of mind for advertisers.

For advertisers, overabundance means lots of nearly-identical apps within one category, creating a major splintering problem. Consumers have too many choices. This excess of options and lack of organization divides consumers with the same interests across several apps rather than consolidating them. With this in mind, advertisers need to rely on a diversified app strategy in order to succeed on mobile. There is no must-have app in any category – rather than putting all their eggs in one basket, marketers should think less about which apps to place messages on and more about how to find their audience in an app-agnostic way.

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Are You Listening To Your Ad Campaigns?

When one ad campaign finishes, how soon do you move on to the next one? Too often, campaigns containing valuable, hidden audience insights are abandoned once they've run their course. You may be discarding insights that can inform future strategic decisions – and not just in terms of which media gets the dollars.

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Announcing the Next Generation of Mobile Video Ad Tech

Imagine the day when an advertiser promotes their heat-saving curtains by projecting them directly on your window. While that may sound like something from The Jetsons, that day isn't too far in the future. With data from connected home devices, someday advertisers may be able to predict the line of home design products to complete your home's redesign in the time it would take you to deliberate over paint swatches.

For marketers, holographic and connected home technologies are the new wild West. They offer new mediums on which to advertise, as well as opportunities to send personalized messages at scale. From Microsoft’s HoloLens, allowing you to explore the internet beyond the confines of a screen, to Google’s Nest, automating the nitty-gritty details of keeping your home in order, advertisers now have the technology to speak to consumers at the most opportune moments.

Bridging the digital and physical worlds via connected devices will boost advertisers’ relevance in two critical ways: first, by what they’re able to put into the home, and second, by what they’re able to take out of it. In terms of the former, new technologies like these will enable consumers to easily visualize an advertiser’s product in their existing space. Additionally, new connected home products offer incredible data that advertisers can leverage for even better targeting capabilities. Like social profiles, data from a consumer’s home offers a unique picture of who a consumer is, providing marketers with an accurate glimpse of their customers.

If you’re like most people who grew up in the early 2000s, Myspace is your old school, in the best way. When Facebook and Twitter exploded, Myspace took a back seat, enduring a mass exodus from the platform. Today, many people would probably be shocked to hear that Myspace is still rolling, with more than 50 million active users. This begs two questions: can social networks succeed even if they’re not in the limelight? And what happens to all that archived user data?

With social media behemoths like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter monopolizing the press, it’s easy to forget there are other networks out there. However, there is an entire world of information-sharing happening outside of the “big three,” and it’s giving consumers more control over their social media “persona” than ever before. Social media isn’t one-size-fits-all and the rapid rise of new social networks like Pinterest, Snapchat, and Instagram provide value to diverse audiences and show that there is a ferocious appetite for more.

Today, people share different aspects of their lives on various networks across the web, which leaves data spread all around. Memories, stories, pictures, and conversations are now data trails that follow people as they hop from one network to the next. Although the Web may never forget, what it remembers can get dicey. When the plug is pulled on a site like Ofoto, for example, a piece of your digital footprint dissolves, taking your precious information with it.

As technology has become more deeply integrated into our daily lives, we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to the benefits. Our social lives now have a distinct virtual dimension, and data drives everything from the products we find on supermarket shelves to the health-monitoring of our four-legged friends. When online dating apps like OKCupid entered the scene, they revolutionized the way we form relationships. But only recently has personal data expanded beyond the realm of data scientists and into the next frontier, enabling the user to analyze technological habits in order to optimize engagements in the physical world.

We’re seeing more and more apps attempt to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds we live in. Like dating app Happn, which uses location data to match users with people they’ve crossed paths with. Or PVLL, the new mobile messaging app that graphs conversation patterns, automates texting, and pulls users’ messaging data in order to ‘hack the online dating game’. And with customizable survey apps like Reporter and Expereal placing data in the hands of the consumer, nearly every aspect of life is now measurable and optimizable–from relationships to caffeine consumption to overall happiness.

Integrating mobile data into daily activities like relationship building adds a previously unexplored coaching element to compliment the connection-based apps where we’ve been flexing our social muscles for years. This wave of new data visualization apps is not only an example of big data becoming small, but it has the potential to erase the stress we encounter in virtual interactions and to provide insight into previously unmeasurable aspects of our lives. 

We’re interested in exploring this new era of data visualization as a lifestyle enhancement feature, so we've deployed the 140 Proof team to test these data viz tools and report back with our findings on how they enhance the lifestyle of the 'quantified self'. 

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Understanding Behavior On Anonymous Apps

The media narrative on social media these past several years has been one of watching children race to the dinner table. Who's the fastest? The biggest? The loudest? Who can scoop the largest portion of monthly users onto their plate? With funding, share prices and ad placement at stake, social media channels targeted at radically different segments of the population have been pitted against each other and it’s no wonder we’ve forgotten our manners.

So when news of the latest PEW poll comparing social media usership levels broke at the top of our newsfeeds this week, it caused us to take a step back and question its meaning–and that of the social media race itself.

No doubt, measuring engagement is important. Readership, usage frequency, unique monthly visitors–all of these are valuable metrics, but their significance applies to different channels in unique ways. Is it really fair to compare the dependence of a Gen X executive using LinkedIn to job hunt to the compulsive page refreshing habits of a college-aged Instagram user?

We aren't the only ones who have paused to rethink the race social channels are constantly evaluated in. In fact, now that we've all arrived at the table, we predict that 2015 is the year for marketers to grow more discerning in our interpretation of statistics. Across the industry, we’ll see abandonment of an “all in” approach and begin to incorporate an array of more balanced tactics.

So let’s begin by applying this logic to the wide, diverse world of social media. Facebook is a place for family. Pinterest is a place for aspirational collections. LinkedIn is a place for professional development. Each of these social spaces are made up of self-selected individuals who engage, contribute and absorb content. These communities are strengthened by and derive their value from this interactive aspect. But judging these networks simply by how many people use them isn’t useful for anyone but investment bankers. What’s useful to us as marketers? Knowing who likes what, and knowing the right context for our messages.                      

Ninety percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years alone, and hardly a day goes by in this industry without reference to data's utility in solving global issues, engaging customers, and fueling growth. In order to track, aggregate, and derive actionable insights from the growing volumes of data that make up the lifeblood of modern business, a well refined, specific skill set is required.

While processing information of this scale is a daunting task, it’s a role Data Architects embrace every day. We sat down with Ali Hamidi, Data Architect at 140 Proof, to learn more about data processing.

What is your role at 140 Proof? What excites you about the job?

I’m a Data Pipeline Architect and my role is all about improving the way we get, store and process the large amount of data that we deal with every day. I design and build tools and systems that enable us to get the most out of the information that we have.

At 140 Proof, we deal with a broad range of types of data (coming from various social networks and sources), so it’s an interesting challenge to build out systems that can efficiently cater for this disparity in a uniform way. I get to work on a lot of really cool tech including various Big Data tools (Shark, Presto, Amazon Redshift) and NoSQL databases (Couchbase, Redis).

How has data architecture impacted the advertising industry?

The maturing of Big Data platforms and the increasing affordability of public cloud services have allowed advertising companies to leverage increasingly sophisticated algorithms, data processing strategies and tools. Ones that previously weren’t practical or financially feasible.

How have you seen data processing improve the consumer-brand experience?

We can significantly improve a consumer’s experience with a particular brand by ensuring that we only show them ads for brands or products that they are truly interested in. In order to do that we need to use whatever data we have to build an accurate profile of the user. The more data we have (and the more effectively we can process it), the better the profile and ultimately the more confidence we have that a particular user is genuinely interested. In reality this scales up to looking at data from hundreds of millions of users.

Reflecting on data use in 2014, what specific development or industry event stands out to you as most significant?

It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific moment or event, but this year has seen a massive push towards Big Data in the public cloud. The competition between  various players has resulted in huge price cuts across the board for both storage and data processing (compute) resources which.

When coupled with the increasing acceptance by businesses to store and process critical business data in the cloud this has meant that we’ve reached the tipping point where the gains outweigh the potential concerns.

What’s a professional aspiration yours?

When it comes to the area of Big Data and NoSQL the industry is still moving at a crazy pace, with new products and paradigms being introduced all the time, I’d definitely like to contribute more to the Open Source ecosystem.

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Every January we share the hottest tech trends for the year. And the watchwords for 2015 are little, mainstream, and programmatic.

Check out our top five and let us know if you agree.

1. Less is More: Why We Need to Start Paying Attention to “Little Data”

Big data was the hot topic of 2014. But in 2015, marketers will realize that it’s the little things that count. It’s not enough to compile massive amounts of data; it’s also about looking into the connections between those points. Little data is necessary to find the most relevant, powerful indicators that can be applied across verticals, from health and consumer to dating and political leanings.

2. The Secret to Using Data? Great UX.

Many companies like Tinder, Tableaux, and ClickView are already using data in a consumer-facing way. 2015 will be the year data goes mainstream; the insightful power of data will be combined with well-designed, digestible UX, putting the power of data in the hands of the people.

3. Why the Home is the Next Frontier of Data

With the rise of connected technologies like Nest and Amazon Echo, marketers will be able to leverage data from people’s homes like never before. Advertising will begin to evolve to meet the needs of the smart home world, with keyword advertising being the essential tool.

The next two predictions come straight from 140 Proof CEO Jon Elvekrog:

4. The Boomerang Effect: Why All Advertising WON’T Be Programmatic

After spending untold dollars on bringing their advertising into the programmatic era, 2015 will be the year that they abandon an "all in" approach and begin to incorporate an array of more balanced tactics. Companies that have made the necessary institutional changes to execute on programmatic will now focus their attention and money elsewhere, after assessing the value they gained from those campaigns. Like the slow cooker in your kitchen, programmatic will heat up companies’ advertising strategies, leaving them ample time to get on with the next big thing. 

5. The Death of Real-Time Marketing

Social media failures in 2014 were too numerous to count. But even for those brands who managed to avoid being publicly shamed for an off-color tweet, how many of them actually sold another bag of chips or another ticket as a result of their efforts? In 2015, marketers need to give up on real-time marketing and use their social profiles to do their job: sell their product to consumers. For example, during the World Cup, an airline has no place commenting on a referee’s missed call or a fight on the field—they should be talking about how much legroom is on their flights and addressing customer complaints.

How’d we do? Any trends you’d strike from the list, or any you’d add? Let us know in the comments.

Jon Elvekrog’s predictions were originally printed in the SEM Post. 

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The Top 10 Social Moments of 2014

Mobile marketers, take note: 2015 is bound to be a big year in mobile commerce and adtech. Mobile Marketer has kicked off 2015 with their Mobile Commerce Daily 2015 Outlook Report, filled with predictions and trends to look for across industries in the new year. 

140 Proof VP Marketing Matt Rosenberg was featured in the report, predicting that:

Public data people generate in social platforms will increasingly be used to inform ad targeting in mobile in environments, particularly apps, that you might not think of as inherently social. This will unlock the amazing power of social data without keeping the narrow scope of ‘buying Facebook’ or ‘buying Twitter.

Read more on what that means for the retail industry and see what else is in store for 2015 in the report.

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The Buzzwords We’d Like to See Buzz Off in 2015

This is the fourth year we’ve compiled our year-in-review list of top social moments, and we gotta say, Internet, we’re impressed. You’re really getting your act together.

You know why? Instead of social being a place where individuals express themselves, it’s now the top way for groups to rally around amazing ideas and goals. We thought the Haiti relief response in 2010 was good, but the Ice Bucket Challenge puts it to shame with flair.

Let’s power through the list:

10. Russia loses face (hilariously) at the Winter Olympics

When reporters got to their hotels for the 2014 Winter Olympics, some interesting stuff awaited them. If stray dogs in hotel rooms and yellow tap water count as interesting. Journalists let off steam by reporting the conditions they encountered:

Still waiting for "preparations" on hotel room to finish. Hoping they're origami-folding toilet roll, rather than, say, putting the roof on.

— Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7)

February 4, 2014

This is the one hotel room @Sochi2014 have given us so far. Shambles. #cnnsochi pic.twitter.com/RTjEkmyan3

— Harry Reekie (@HarryCNN)

February 4, 2014

9. Jell-O goes takes its game local for college sports fans

When you think about it, Jell-O is a perfect candidate for a tailgate party dessert. It’s a finger food (but not a messy one), it can be made the day before, and it’s built for a bumpy car ride. 140 Proof was proud to support Jell-O’s campaign to reach college football fans to let them know about custom “Uni-molds” celebrating their favorite teams.

8. Spotify breaks out the social data insights

If you had a tough 2014, music might have been the thing that got you through it. And reliving the soundtrack of your life might tell you more about yourself than which of your profile photos got the most likes. Spotify, as part of its increased focus on data analysis, can now tell you what the music you listened to this year says about you. Have a listen to your recent favorites with their year in music tool and dive into what everyone’s been up to on the Spotify Insights blog.

7. Armchair sleuths mount a hunt for Malaysia 370

Someday we’ll be able to crowdsource an actual physical search of the earth. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines 370 captured the interest of social media users for weeks. Where IS that plane? 

6. McRib storms Chicago

Another one of our favorite social campaigns from 2014 — McDonald’s teamed up with the Chicago Bears to launch an appearance of the beloved McRib sandwich. 

5. Everyone gets hacked

It’s hard being on the grid sometimes. Everyone and their mother was hacked this year, whether it was your actual mother (because she shopped at Home Depot) or Jennifer Lawrence (whose phone was hacked — by the way, it’s not nice to go look at the evidence). Sony, JPMorgan, and eBay were among the companies broken open in 2014. Change those passwords, replace your debit cards, and keep the confidential conversations out of email, people.

4. Oh snap! Advertisers move into Snapchat

It happens to all our favorite social platforms. Are you surprised Snapchat launched its own ad product? We’re happy for them; they’ve got a lock on one of America’s top audiences: Millennials and teens. That kind of appeal won’t disappear any time soon. We encourage them to think carefully about how they’ll use the mountains of data they’re surely piling up, and we’ve got some thoughts on their stance on native ads, too.

3. Instagram takes itself to another level

Instagram introduced its own advertising product last year, which doesn’t seem to have tripped it up one bit. Instagram is now the go-to photo app for 300 million monthly users, surpassing Twitter’s 284 million, and Citigroup recently valued the company at $35 billion. 

2. Allstate makes a PDA with LGBTs

Has social media made the Internet more progressive? Brands from all verticals are now comfortable coming out in support of alternative sexuality. Even insurance brands. Allstate recently tapped 140 Proof for a Tumblr-centric campaign that spoke to members of the LGBT community, and it was one of our top performers of the year. Congratulations.

1. Social gets mobilized: Ice Bucket Challenges, Ferguson, #YesAllWomen, Hong Kong Protests

You can’t ignore the fact that social media got more political this year. Heated sometimes, with Ferguson protest discussions. And refreshingly chill other times, with Ice Bucket Challenge entries that included even Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. People rallied together in support of things they thought important, like #YesAllWomen and the Umbrella Revolution (which generated solidarity rallies across the world). Which goes to show that social media is more about ideas, aspirations, and passion than it is about geography and demographics. That’s one of the principles underpinning our work with social data as we continue to develop the Blended Interest Graph at 140 Proof.

Were there any amazing social media moments that you think should have been on our list?

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The Buzzwords We’d Like to See Buzz Off in 2015

You’ve heard it countless times: big data is changing the way we interact with the world around us, from the way businesses make pricing decisions, to how we choose a dentist. But as much as we’ve leveraged big data’s insights in new and impactful ways, there’s an enormous knowledge gap in understanding how we actually arrive at those insights.

That’s where data scientists come in—the engineers who tackle these vast spreads of data and break it into valuable, actionable takeaways. For a better understanding of how massive amounts of data are handled, particularly in advertising, we spoke with Shawn O’Hare, one of our 140 Proof data scientists.

1.What, in layman’s terms, does a data scientist do?

Data science is a broad field that concerns itself with the extraction of knowledge from data.  A data scientist is typically knowledgeable in mathematics, statistics, and computer science, as techniques from these fields are fundamental in the extraction, transformation, storage, and analysis of big data sets.

Graphical structures are becoming increasingly important in all areas of data science, since they are convenient model for the relationships between variables of interest.  For example, the connections between individuals in a social network has a natural graph structure, from which we can infer a great deal about the individuals and communities within the network. 

2. Raw data is abstract. How do you make it more digestible? In your opinion, why is this type of information helpful to business?

Almost any business needs to fundamentally understand its customers on a deeper level than demographics. Humanizing data essentially entails wrapping it in a compelling narrative and lucid visualizations.  Fortunately our data tells a natural story about a community's subgroups, interests, and temporal trends.

3. Can you give an example of how you apply algebraic structure to bring data to life?

Once data is endowed with the appropriate algebraic structure you can invoke all the relevant mathematical tools to perform a more theoretically sound analysis.  In this sense, adding structure is primarily motivated by technical concerns rather than any attempt to humanize it.  Though, as a mathematician, endowing raw data with mathematical structure certainly makes it come to life for me! 

Classical statistics concerned itself with extracting the most information from tiny data sets.  Due to this, the techniques utilized can be computationally expensive and do not scale to big data.  In some sense, scalable machine learning/statistical techniques have not evolved as rapidly as our ability to collect data.    

Modern mining of massive data sets relies quite a bit on clever data engineering: choosing the appropriate data structures, databases, and specific algorithmic implementations.  Additionally, you need to know when to perform numerical estimations and subsample.         

4. How do you think mathematical analysis can drive the advertising industry forward?

Advertising faces an ineluctable pull towards personalization.  In my mind, the future of advertising lies in understanding how a product relates to all other similar products and how the users of said product relate to each other.  It's not a terrible stretch to imagine a world where shopping for mundane goods is carried out almost entirely by a learning algorithm.  In this scenario, it becomes increasingly important to understand the customer base, so that recommendations can naturally propagate to relevant individuals.  

Mining data is important in general because it allows humans to gain insights that are not readily apparent.  As a single individual, it is quite difficult for me to crawl a social network and discover tightly linked sub-communities within a larger community.  I cannot read every person's public message stream to try and infer what they are interested in.  Even with a team of thousands of people this is an intractable problem.  Data science tries to tackle these challenges. 

5. In your opinion, how is data shaping business and what are some of the greatest achievements thus far?

Data—just like technology in general—is an incredibly valuable resource not only for the insights we can extract from it, but because it's difficult to predict new and creative ways to utilize it. 

That data is valuable as evidenced by the fact that some of the largest and most successful companies in the world—Google, Amazon, Alibaba—would not exist without data.

6. What possibilities do you see for data in the future?

One could argue that big data is ushering in a new era of scientific research.  Computational power did something similar when it allowed researchers to study the natural world through computer models.

Buzz Andersen, creator of beloved Twitter app Birdfeed, shares what he learned about iOS development and app marketing during his engagement in the Twitter client wars. Birdfeed didn’t gain widespread use among mainstream Twitter users, but it was popular with power users and influenced other developers during the 2007-2010 “Ecosystem” era of Twitter.

Buzz is principal at Brooklyn Computer Club and a tech industry veteran who previously worked at Apple, Square, and Tumblr, and he created PodWorks and Cocoalicious for the Mac. We thank him for sharing his story.

Watch “Tweetpocalypse Now: A Year in the iOS Twitter Client Wars”:

“We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.” - Francis Coppola about Apocalypse Now

You can follow Buzz on Twitter at @buzz. For more tech talks, follow Hack, Deploy, Scale at @hackdeployscale.

Photos:

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Sam Schillace of Box speaks at Hack, Deploy, Scale

Companies will enable programmatic buying of mobile ads using proprietary Blended Interest Graph targeting.

 NEW YORK – December 9, 2014 – 140 Proof, the mobile media company that uses social data to improve ad targeting, and PubMatic, the programmatic advertising platform for leading publishers, today announced a partnership that will enable advertisers to programmatically purchase 140 Proof’s propriety “Blended Interest Graph” targeted advertisements for mobile apps on the PubMatic platform. 140 Proof’s decision to work with PubMatic followed a competitive search process, during which 140 Proof evaluated several programmatic solutions. The 140 Proof ads will be made available on the PubMatic platform via a private marketplace.

“We have always believed in the promise of programmatic. The patent we were granted earlier this year is so valuable because it includes algorithmically matching ads to audience based on the individual’s social activity and interests,” said 140 Proof CEO Jon Elvekrog.  “As the world’s first social data management platform, we’re excited to expand into buying systems that can access 140 Proof’s unique ability to identify the right audience for a brand advertisement in mobile in-app, in which quality ad targeting has been notoriously difficult.”

Through PubMatic, 140 Proof will be accessible to ad buying platforms worldwide.  The company will make both a standard set of audience segments, or personas, available to approved buyers.  In addition, clients may work with 140 Proof through PubMatic to develop custom personas that closely match an advertiser’s desired consumer segmentation and dynamically match creative to these persona

Kirk McDonald, President at PubMatic added: “As a leader in mobile programmatic solutions for publishers, we are always looking at ways to further enrich impression value.  The innovation introduced to market by 140 Proof brings a new level of targeting that adds a unique solution that reaches individuals within mobile apps.”

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