Even when you consider all of the different factors mentioned above, it is still relatively difficult to pinpoint a trajectory for which big data analytics is going to take digital publishing. What isn’t difficult is acknowledging the huge insights that big data has to offer in regards to consumer behavior. Here are a couple of practical benefits to big data usage: It can take the hassle out of sales aggregation and tracking. One of the more tedious aspects of working in marketing in this industry is trying to collate all your sales data from the myriad of different sources and then subsequently having to spend hours reconciling the information into reports. With big data, it’s feasible that all those reports could be collated into one. A benefit to this is that one would have more time to refresh that report on a more frequent basis, by using a sales report dashboard – they exist and will do wonders for you. These sales report dashboards could also help you in convincing advertisers that their marketing ROI will be more measured and effective - coaxing ad-spend just got a whole lot easier.All in all, big data may seem a bit daunting and tedious, but in reality, it's a big friendly giant that just wants to help you out - and like it or not, it’s coming to the Digital Publishing industry.