Predictive analytics is the math behind the phrase “history repeats itself”. While data itself has been around forever, we haven’t always had the tools to get the most out of it. Now, using predictive analytics you can unlock a whole wealth of information from your previously raw data. Predictive analytics uses statistical algorithms, machine learning models, and other AI techniques to recognize important trends in your past data that it can then use to better predict future outcomes from your current data.
How Predictive Analytics are Being Used
AI-powered predictive analytics can help businesses and organizations forecast future trends, identify patterns, and make informed decisions based on data-driven insights. This can be useful in a wide range of industries, from finance and healthcare to marketing and retail. By leveraging AI, predictive analytics can become more accurate and efficient over time as the algorithms learn from more data and improve their predictions.
Almost all major industries have realized the importance of predictive analytics and are trying to make sure that they take full advantage of this staggering tool. For example, one of the biggest users of predictive analytics is the banking industry. Banks are able to use predictive analytics to avoid unnecessary risks. Specifically, they can use this tool to scan a specific scenario and see all the ways that a similar situation in the past has either lost or made them money and what factors contributed to the outcome. The predictive analysis will then suggest the best course of action for the bank to follow.
Predictive Analytics Use in Social Media
Recently, predictive analytics has been used by a completely different type of industry, one where we can truly see its full capabilities: Social Media. Savvy social media companies have continuously been able to keep its users more engaged in their platform, as well as keeping them engaged for longer. They do this by looking into your activity while on their platform to determine what it is that interests you and what type of posts keep you on their platform the longest.
TikTok has been able to do an exceptional job at this by tailoring each user’s specific experience to best suit their own interests. The homepage of TikTok is where a collection of other users’ videos populate, and they become more tailored to your interests the more you use the app, as they’re able to collect more and more data on your account. To illustrate this, if you signed up 2 different people with different interests to TikTok at the same time, their accounts would first have very similar homepage views with a wide variety of videos displaying different demographics and activities. However if you were to compare their homepages again a few days after they began using the app, their homepages would be as different as their interests are, as TikTok will work to find more videos that it thinks will appeal to them specifically.
How Will You Use Predictive Analytics?
Clearly, predictive analytics is here to stay, and it’s only a matter of time before more businesses find creative ways to integrate this fast developing field into their business plan. It’s up to you what you do with your data, but judging how this field is rapidly changing to benefit companies financially, not analyzing your data is akin to leaving money on the table.