Who is going to Win the Fifa World Cup 2018 Football Tournament?

World Cup Soccer is round the corner and the whole world’s eyes are going to be on Russia come June 2018.

Who do you do think is going to win the World Cup ? Well we all can predict to a large extent some of the teams most probable to win.

Do you know which team won the World Cup in 2014? 

Germany did.

But did you know that Germany were playing with 12 players?

A lot of experts said that throughout the tournament Germany was playing with 12 players not 11!

Who was the 12th player …….the big data analytics team!

Germany was one of the first teams to use the Big Data technology to help them win the tournament.

Imagine if as a football coach you can study your opposition and predict the following

• the players’ pass percentage
• whether he tends to pass left or right
• his speed on the field
• the part of the field where he is most likely to stand
• how many yards does he usually run with the ball before shooting or passing the ball

and a lot more……

A lot of these statistics helped the coach and the team to plan and implement strategies that helped the players to a large extent on how and where to position themselves on the field to have the best chance of defending against an attacking move by the opposition or the best ways to break the opposition team’s defense when they go on attack.

This information was collected by the computers and television replays , thousands of data points per second; and then the big data analytics software did their magic and fed the coach the data about the opposition players and his own players for analysis.

And this was in 2014!

Watch the first part of this video…..

So besides the skills of the players involved, what will play a big part in the tournament this year is which team will be using the information by the big data analytics software more efficiently and executing plans on the field based on this data.

And I am pretty sure that now coaches of teams of all major sports in the world have embraced this technology.

Big data and big data analytics has become a huge industry and companies are using this information to accurately predict consumer behavior trends.

This has given rise to a new form of analytics . Predictive Analytics.

With historical data of consumers in the hands of these predictive analytics softwares, companies can very accurately predict what products the consumer is most likely to buy and when will he buy it.

This information can be used by these companies to target them with ads of products that they will buy in the near future and even send you coupons for these products.

How does Predictive Analytics work?

Predictive Analytics makes use of the data collected, and then using machine learning techniques and data mining techniques to predict trends and behavior patterns. 

Steps in Predictive Analytics

1. Data Collection : Collection and preparation of data from multiple sources for analysis.
2. Data Analysis :  Data Analysis is the process of inspecting, cleaning and modelling data with the objective of discovering useful information, arriving at conclusion.
3. Statistics : Using statistical analysis techniques and models to validate the assumptions and test the assumptions.
4. Predictive Models : Creating predictive models to forecast accurately future consumer behaviours.
5. Deployment: Predictive model deployment provides the option to deploy the analytical results into everyday decision making process to get results, reports and output by automating the decisions based on the modelling.

Watch this very entertaining video on predictive analytics. This video was released in 2013!

Forget consumer behavior predictions , big data analytics can even predict important life events!

Impact on Digital Marketing

As the industry of big data analytics and predictive analytics is growing by leaps and bounds it is but obvious that digital marketers will and some them are already using this information to target consumers with ads of products that they are more likely to buy in the near future.

This is resulting in more effective ad placements which is further resulting in decrease costs of digital advertising and increased ROI of digital marketing investments.

In other words

Targeting the Right Customers at the Right Time with the Right Content and Right Products!