On the effectiveness of online big data advertising

Nowadays, Big Data is regarded more and more as the "one-size-fits- all" solutions for almost all problems. However, despite the intrinsic advantages of big data, the mechanism and to what extent it helps address a specific problem is still not well understood in contrast to the rapid growth rate of big data related technologies. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of the application of big data in the context of online targeted advertising. We find that the value of big data, from the point of view of revenue, depends on the market structure and on the degree of match between advertisements and web users' interests more than the bigness of its own. In a mismatched market, big data cannot help increase the total revenue, even if the size of data approaches infinity. We also develop analytic criteria to assist identifying such situations.