Mobile advertisements have turned out to have unintended uses for companies; rather than simply helping them sell a product or service in the ad, they also provide a feedback loop of insight about their customers. Customers’ responses in aggregate are essentially big data. So it should not be surprising when a company that started in mobile ads takes what it has learned and parlays it into big data services.

Gladys Kong, CEO of UberMedia [no relation to Uber ride sharing app], spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the GE Minds + Machines event. They discussed the role that marketing and ads play in Big Data at both the front and back end. She stated that filtering and scaling are necessary to spin out from simple ads to larger big data solutions.

“Transforming a set of raw data into insights also takes a lot of understanding of the business use cases,” Kong stated.

Using the auto industry as an example of the advertising feedback loop, Kong said, “They like to target customers that are in-market already — but not just in market. If you’re [in market for a] minivan, they don’t want to show you their European car ad.”

Mom and pop shop goes digital

Kong said that another two-way route for customer activity to flow to marketing and back is in connecting online to offline.

“The coolest thing, I think, is using data to help brick and mortar shops make decisions. A lot of times we help with online marketing. But how do you apply that to stores that maybe don’t even have an online presence?” Kong said.

*Disclosure: GE and other companies sponsor some GE Minds + Machines segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither GE nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of GE Minds + Machines.

Photo by SiliconANGLE