BBC to spaff £18 MILLION of licence fee cash... on BIG DATA

The Beeb is planing to chuck up to £18m worth of licence fee payers' cash at data analytics suppliers to work their dark arts at the corporation.

A tender for a three-year Next Generation Digital Analytics Services agreement appeared in the Official Journal of the European Union* at the weekend.

"The BBC is looking for a framework of suppliers to provide web and data analytics tools and services, and associated activities," the tender stated.

The framework will be split into two lots: the first is a single supplier lot for a core analytics platform designed to provide "insight" into web reporting, advanced predictive analytics and regulatory reporting requirements.

This is worth between £6.3m to £9.9m for the supplier that wins the only seat on the framework.

The second lot is a multi-supplier framework which covers enhanced reporting and analytics tools, worth between £5.5m and £7.92m. Up to 24 suppliers can make it onto this agreement.

Lot Two includes multivariate testing, multi attribute segmentation, models to drive algorithmic content recommendations, visualisation and social media analytics.

Anyone wanting to chance their luck should note the closing date for submissions is noon on 18 November.

Venerable analyst house TechMarketView described the deal as "eye-catching" because at up to £18m, the data analytics gig was a "medium-sized project" in a sector where "advanced analytics projects tend to be small or exploratory".

"We expect all the usual suspects will be interested in the analytics tender but will be insightful to see who they [the BBC] pull in from the specialist analytics vendor community. This is a valuable opportunity for the 'little guys'," said TMV's Angela Eager. ®

*All the tenders and contract awards by any organisation that receives public money (over a certain threshold) must be published here according to EU law.