Real time data is what makes up today’s digital gold mine, attracting spectators the world over.  When it comes to processing data on a large scale, a real-time spin can give an emerging company a leg up.  Citrusleaf is adding a real-time attribution product to its database solution offerings, revealing its second product since launching in March with $2 million in funding.  Called Citrusleaf RTA, ad exchanges, demand-side platforms and ad networks are able to efficiently store and retrieve data quickly, and at the time it’s needed.  What’s special about Citrusleaf RTA is that it can drill down to an individual’s user behavior, throwing in previous user data for real-time comparison analysis.

It’s because of  Citrusleaf’s technology and setup that its able to process huge volumes of impression data in real time.  RTA leverages Citrusleaf 2.0’s scalable architecture, ACID compliance and automated clustering to enable efficient storage and real-time retrieval of specific user data.  This can reach terabytes for a single end user, looking at their history of behavior records.  If an advertiser is running a campaign for a retailer and wants to know why an end user made a purchase on their fourth visit versus their second, Citrusleaf RTA is able to make such comparisons in real time.  This can enable ad platforms to further tailor and end user experience during an ongoing transaction, basing quick decisions on true data, not analysis run on sample groups and large scale demographics.

“What’s happening is our customers need to understand user behavior in order to be successful.  This is the most important thing they’re doing,” explains Citrusleaf co-founder and CTO Dr. Srini V. Srinivasan.  “What our customers want to find out is what the customer conversion rate is on an hourly basis, and why they took an action–why they signed up, why they made a purchase.

“The actual amount of data we’re talking about is really huge. And customers want to compare customer behavior from three months ago to just now.  They want to relate real-time actions to previous behavior.  That’s not an easy problem to solve.”

In fact, the transactions problem is still being solved at an industry-wide level, but because of Citrusleaf’s foresight, they’ve been able to build their technology around addressing this very problem.  Because of that early technology, Citrusleaf has been able to bring to market a second product in just three months, addressing attributions, with the technology for addressing transactions already in mind.

Citrusleaf is making its niche in the advertising sector, with an emphasis on big data as well as business intelligence.  They go hand in hand, with BI validating use cases around big data, and improving the sprouting ecosystem at various levels (Other cloud services like ClickFox and Oracle are well aware of BI’s importance within the big data spectrum).  When it comes to cloud services, many companies are addressing similar issues around big data and analytics, finding their own niches to leverage their technology for solving one industry’s problem or another.

As Citrusleaf moves forward in establishing its new company, it could very well find its technology has evolved to a point of being applicable to a wide range of industries.  For now, advertising is putting Citrusleaf’s flagship product to great use, as the startup saw overwhelming success at ad:tech in both Chicago and San Francisco.  The innovation behind Citrusleaf has extended its database technology in new ways, forging into a burgeoning market that’s ripe with expectation.

As you can imagine, one industry that is benefiting from big data analytics is retail, enabling a phenomenon that’s mirrored what’s taking place across the enterprise and the cloud.  Flash sale sites have taken off as wildly popular examples of how real-time data can incur a new world of transactions and attributions, with the most knowledgable brands reaping the most benefits from their growing base of loyal users.

One company that’s very brand focused is The Clymb, a flash sale site that sells outdoor and sporting goods.  It’s a niche market that’s steeped in information about its end users and brand interactions, seeking to deepen that relationship rather than expand through storefront verticals.  Such dedication to a single market will create a significant and valuable database for The Clymb, signifying an aspect of a wider data marketplace that’s able to leverage its own information across various trends and points of analysis.

“We made a conscientious effort to partner with the best brands, and have seen success is bringing this [flash sales] model to outdoor and sporting goods,” co-founder and COO Kelly Dachtler tells me.  “We look at the outdoor industry as a jewel…and many brands have lifetime customers.  The challenges around how to balance inventory controls with price integrity is an age-old question, and our industry is a part of answering this question.”