Overstock Accelerates with Big Data Platform

Overstock is one of the granddaddies of Internet commerce with 20 years worth of customer data to support its marketing analytics. Here's how it increased the speed of models and analysis by 5x. Getting the attention of consumers is no small feat these days. They are bombarded with advertisements on television, through their mobile phones, and on the Internet. You may see ads from your favorite online retailers follow you from Google to news sites to Facebook. Engaging with the right consumer at the right time can make a big difference for online retailers, and these ads are an important means of doing it. But there's plenty of competition out there. If you want to use these kinds of ads to gain consumer attention today, you probably have to act fast. It's not like the Internet commerce of 20 years ago when online retailer Overstock came onto the scene, buying and then selling the inventory of failed online retailers. Overstock.com is really one of the original online ecommerce businesses. This online retailer was founded the same year as Netflix (the company that started by sending out DVDs via US mail) and 3 years after Amazon.com made its debut selling print books on the Internet and shipping them to your doorstep. It was a time when the World Wide Web -- we called it that back then -- was just getting started as a mainstream network used by consumers for many things, including consumer purchases. After 20 years in business, Overstock has amassed huge volumes of data. Overstock's business model has evolved over the years beyond discount and liquidation to include sales of new merchandise and hand-crafted merchandise from developing countries. The site sells everything from furniture to apparel to electronics.