The UK’s data market is reported to be the largest in Europe and the second biggest globally, with an estimated value of £1.1 billion ($1.5 billion).
The “Global Data Market Share” report from cloud technologies group OnAudience.com looked for the first time into trends, estimates and forecasts for the value of data across 28 markets (generating 90% of global data spend) over a three-year period (2016-2018).
The tech group found that the estimated value of UK data market value this year is growing by 22.9% year-on-year (YoY). Back in 2016, the estimate reached £0.7 billion ($1 billion) before increasing by 26.1% to £0.9 billion ($1.2 billion) in 2017.
This growth has made the UK the second-largest data market in the world – although this is leagues behind the leader US which is estimated at $11.4 billion.
European growth
The study also demonstrates the global data market size. In 2017, its value was $13.5 billion and this year the global spend on data will reach $18.2 billion (+34.7% YoY).
According to OneAudience.com, Europe is driving 18% of total worldwide data spend and has an estimated data market value of $2.4 billion in 2017, with the value set to reach $3.2 billion this year.
Drilling down to country-level, France has been reported the second largest in Europe with the value of market share at $247 million (+36.8% YoY), followed by the Netherlands ($229 million), Germany ($203.4) and Denmark ($100 million).
Germany’s data market share, meanwhile, is set to be the fastest growing in 2018, with an estimated 52.4% growth rate.
The AI effect
Tomasz Pelczarski, business solution professional at enterprise group Microsoft hinted that the harnessing of data to generate insights through artificial intelligence (AI) systems has helped steer growth in the market as the marketing industry rely of information to improve the effects of their ad campaigns.
”Organisations of all sizes and representing all industries start to look for revenue in data streams, flowing constantly into their systems […] since each organisation is unique, they need to find their own way to make the most of AI systems.” added Pelczarski.